Car Dealer Experience Stories

Jmann said:
I think some people just want the attention for having the first ones available. Meanwhile they are the guinea pigs for the factory’s mistakes. I would never gamble on first year models on domestics.
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FTFY

i agree on not buying 1st year models, they always seem to have some type of issues, i tend to buy near the end of the run with the refresh right around the corner, i rarely have any issues with any of my cars . . . .
 
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Carson said:
A Tale of Two Oil Services

Princeton Porsche

Oil service, brake fluid flush, annual inspection. When making the appointment, which is my first service with the car, we went over the service history on the car, what was done, what would need to be done in 2022. They offered to pickup and drop off the car. Not a chance, of course. I said I could wait for the car but they advised I would have a loaner car to use if I wanted to go get breakfast or run errands.

Arrive and check in. Hand them a Blackstone UOA container. Have an espresso. Given keys to a 2021 Macan. Service manager comes out and introduces himself. We talk about about Porsches, GT cars, Monticello, the crazy car market. Have an espresso. I check in with the used car manager. We have a mutual friend in common, we talk about his lack of inventory, lack of allocations moving forward, how most 911 base and S allocations are going to be converted to GTS allocations. He just took delivery of a 2022 base 911 for himself, so we look at that briefly. He offers to let me take something out of the used car inventory (of which there was only about 8 cars), but I tell him I'm interested in driving the Macan. I ask his opinion on if I should even bother staying on the GT3 list as I'm not going to pay 50 over. He suggests I stay on as who knows what may happen for the 2023 model year, the crazy economy and chip shortages. He recommends a good breakfast spot and off I go.

Head to breakfast, which was great (Turning Point in Mercer Mall). Run up to Halter's to look for a helmet. Hit a few backroads then back to the dealer. Base Macan in sport mode was pretty peppy! Have an espresso. Play on laptop for 45 minutes in waiting area. Tech comes out, hands me the oil sample and tells me the car is fine, no issues, and he didn't want to leave the oil in the car. He daily drives a 74 Carrera and told me about rebuilding the engine last year during COVID shutdown. He tells me the inspection video of my car will be sent to my phone shortly.

Get video, shows car on lift. Video of brakes, suspension, tires, engine, and transmission. All looks good. Maybe 45 seconds in length.

$870. Next years service will be about $2200. I took a Porsche branded water bottle and a granola bar and off I went.

Other than removing the plastic cover they had placed over the seat, I couldn't tell anyone had been inside my car.


Fullerton Chrysler

I check their website and find a coupon for full synthetic oil service. $45. The oil and filter would cost nearly that much. I also have two new/used winter tires to mount up. I stop by dealer to make appointment.

Service writer says I don't need an appointment. I ask to make appointment. No appointment needed. Back and forth, she finally writes my name and cell on a sticky note and puts it on her monitor.

I come in for Post-It note appointment. She doesn't recognize me. I reminder her of sticky note and that triggers her memory. Here's where it gets good.

I explain that the two right side tires, RF and RR, are 3/32 and the left side tires, LF and LR, are 7/32. The two tires to be mounted are in the trunk and are 8/32 each. Place the 8/32 tires on the front axle. Since the tires are unidirectional, dismount the LF tire and remount that on the RR. I should end up with 3 tires mounted and balanced with two tires on front at 8/32 and two on the rear at 7/32. I draw a picture and write this down and ask her to give to the tech. She thanks me for making it so clear.

Hour later car is "done". I haven't cleaned the wheels in, well, ever. So they are covered in brake dust. From 40 feet away I can tell the front tires were at least removed from the car and I see shiny new wheel weights. But the two rear tires were not. And no new wheel weights on the RR. RR is still 3/32. I show the service writer, she checks with the tech. Tech says he did mount up the LF on the RR. Now, I am annoyed. Tell service writer that the tech is either confused, lazy, or lying, none of which are acceptable. Additionally, now I break balls and tell service writer the tech dripped oil on the right fender and didn't clean it up. So, go get him. She says she will clean up the oil. I tell her no, that's the tech's job, go get him. He's going to accountable for his actions and inactions.

Manager comes out. I explain, he gets it. He sees the RR is nearly bald and doesn't have new wheel weights. He wipes off oil. Goes into shop. Comes back white-faced. While we were arguing about whether the tech actually did his job, the tire recycler showed up and took my dismounted tires already. Manager calls recycler, can't get in touch with driver. Plus, it's probably covered by other tires by now.

Manager says he will order a new tire for me, on the dealership. I tell him they are Michelin X-Ice and over $200 each, which is why I bought two used tires for $135 shipped. And, if he buys a new tire for me, I'll have one at 7/32 and one at 10/32 on the same axle and I won't be able to sleep knowing that. And I don't expect him to buy two new tires.

I tell him I'll look to see if I can find another used tire and he can pay for that. He can't he says. Can't buy a used eBay for a customer. So, I say I'll buy the tire if he does the oil service and tire mounting for free. He agrees. I find one 8/32 tire for $74 shipped. Ordered. They will install when it gets delivered. Overall they resolved the issue but JFC we should have never been there in the first place.

Coffee machine sort of worked. Chips and cookies for $1 each in the vending machine.

$114 for oil service and 2 tires mounted and balanced. Subtract $114 for incompetence. Add $74 for replacement tire. Total of $74.

Leave service and drive around back of building. Two techs are out back vaping. I stop and roll down window and tell them maybe if they spent more time reading the service orders than vaping they'd have happier customers. Off I went.
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What I don't understand is why you wasted your time arguing over the technician lying about the tire instead of promptly showing them the video of the car being serviced...they did send you a video, didn't they? LOL, I bet that if Chysler were to send service video to their customer would be one of the technician mooning the camera...Thank God I drive a Jeep! Wait, what?!?!?
 
serviceguy said:
What I don't understand is why you wasted your time arguing over the technician lying about the tire instead of promptly showing them the video of the car being serviced...they did send you a video, didn't they? LOL, I bet that if Chysler were to send service video to their customer would be one of the technician mooning the camera...Thank God I drive a Jeep! Wait, what?!?!?
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When I had a Jeep and brought it in for service the dealer drove it into New Brunswick and got me a bunch of parking tickets.

The Service Manager at Bridgewater Chevy drove my last Suburban thru an EZPass lane even though I had pulled my pass. At least he realized his mistake and filled up my truck with gas and knocked 10% off the bill for any inconvenience.

The Jeep dealer just tossed the tickets and waited for me to get them in the mail and complain.
 
Bike N Gear said:
When I had a Jeep and brought it in for service the dealer drove it into New Brunswick and got me a bunch of parking tickets.

The Service Manager at Bridgewater Chevy drove my last Suburban thru an EZPass lane even though I had pulled my pass. At least he realized his mistake and filled up my truck with gas and knocked 10% off the bill for any inconvenience.

The Jeep dealer just tossed the tickets and waited for me to get them in the mail and complain.
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Sounds about right...while I had nothing like that happening to me it wouldn't surprise me much...
 
Jmann said:
So I had a reservation for the new bronco. I’m not currently interested in a new vehicle, so I didn’t put an order in yet. I might be interested if the Sasquatch/manual combo comes available, or I move to somewhere I can justify another vehicle. So I just expected my reservation to sit there until I acted on it.

So this week I get an email saying that my order was successfully received, with details on a specific model and options that was supposedly ordered by me. So I call the dealer and they said that since I never put in an order they used my reservation to get dealer stock. And that I’m not obligated to purchase it. I told them that I paid for the reservation and I may have still wanted to use it in the future. I ended up having them refund me my deposit (we’ll see if I actually get refunded).

From what I’m hearing the process has been bad for a lot of people. There was a moment when I was considering ordering one but the aggressive voicemails the salespeople where leaving scared me off.
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There's way too much shady stuff going on. With dealers right now . I was following it all very closely while I was waiting 15 weeks for my truck to get built. Your dealer is going to wind up screwing themselves if they are doing that with multiple orders for broncos. They have to go through a customer order verification process just to have the order get built now and then they are going to be getting audited to make sure a high percentage of those vehicles were actually sold to the person listed on the order other wise they will be highly penalized in their future allocations. Ford really isn't building stock orders of much of anything right now so dealers were doing a bunch of bogus customer orders prior to June when they changed the process just to get stock on the lots.
 
For the car I’m going to flip and then also my s2000 to get it back to factory. About 6-7 years ago I had it done by a track tech for track use but since then I’ve realized I’ll never take it there so I want to bring it back to stock. Then I’m going to flip that and buy me a Lamborghini, well, one can dream 😁
 
THATmanMANNY said:
For the car I’m going to flip and then also my s2000 to get it back to factory. About 6-7 years ago I had it done by a track tech for track use but since then I’ve realized I’ll never take it there so I want to bring it back to stock. Then I’m going to flip that and buy me a Lamborghini, well, one can dream 😁
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Isn't winter a bad time to flip a Vert? :D
 
on BaT it’s always sunnier and warmer

Good point/question I’ll ask them!

My friend who you bought the GTI from inherited his dads 330ci sedan. He asked me for reference for a shop and I pointed him towards Iggys. Fortunately, he found somewhere closer to home or else it would have been under water! (Ida)
 
Took my wife’s X3 to the dealer today for routine maintenance covered by the first three years. While there I wandered the sales floor. A number of M and near-M’s (eg M440,etc) on the floor. In addition to MSRP they’ve added $5000 to $30,000 in “market adjustments”. 😳
 
icebiker said:
Took my wife’s X3 to the dealer today for routine maintenance covered by the first three years. While there I wandered the sales floor. A number of M and near-M’s (eg M440,etc) on the floor. In addition to MSRP they’ve added $5000 to $30,000 in “market adjustments”. 😳
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All the dealers are adding "market adjustments" to the MSRP on new vehicles. Isn't that price gouging? How is that legal?

How is that not the same as raising the price of gas during a gas shortage or the price of a bottle of water during a hurricane?

Where's Murphy and the AG on this? We are technically still in Murphys back door state of emergency.
 
terrabike01 said:
All the dealers are adding "market adjustments" to the MSRP on new vehicles. Isn't that price gouging? How is that legal?

How is that not the same as raising the price of gas during a gas shortage or the price of a bottle of water during a hurricane?

Where's Murphy and the AG on this? We are technically still in Murphys back door state of emergency.
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Comrade Murphy doesn't care about this or the small person's economy. Look at my post about the almost double price Bronco. As defined:

New Jersey’s price gouging law prohibits excessive price increases during a declared State of Emergency and for 30 days after its termination.

An excessive price increase is any price that exceeds 10 percent of the price the product or service was sold during the normal course of business prior to the State of Emergency.
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Jmann said:
So I had a reservation for the new bronco. I’m not currently interested in a new vehicle, so I didn’t put an order in yet. I might be interested if the Sasquatch/manual combo comes available, or I move to somewhere I can justify another vehicle. So I just expected my reservation to sit there until I acted on it.

So this week I get an email saying that my order was successfully received, with details on a specific model and options that was supposedly ordered by me. So I call the dealer and they said that since I never put in an order they used my reservation to get dealer stock. And that I’m not obligated to purchase it. I told them that I paid for the reservation and I may have still wanted to use it in the future. I ended up having them refund me my deposit (we’ll see if I actually get refunded).

From what I’m hearing the process has been bad for a lot of people. There was a moment when I was considering ordering one but the aggressive voicemails the salespeople where leaving scared me off.
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The new 2dr Bronco was on our short list, but not really because, Ford. There is really not much out there we that would even consider buying, but I'd like to get something to replace a 2011MY when my wife has to go back into the office in 2022. Plus, everything now seems $50-60k if you want all 4 wheels, then doesn't seem like $50K+ purchase?!

We'll probably wind up ordering a 2023 something...
 
Still surprised our Venice, FL Toyota dealer is selling wifey a Highlander Hybrid for msrp - plus some dealer installed mats and window tinting.
 
terrabike01 said:
Where's Murphy and the AG on this? We are technically still in Murphys back door state of emergency.
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This is happening all over the US. Not just in NJ. Dealers aren’t getting cars to sell, so they jack up the profit on the ones they do sell. Sucks. Glad I’m not in the market.


What’s amazing are all the people paying this inflated rate. Probably many of the same people up to their eyeballs in debt.

If my car dies or gets totaled, I’ll buy a used shitbox commuter or motorcycle.
 
Went to the dealer owned lube place for my oil change yesterday. Couldn't do. They have 3 workers and 2 called in sick. 3 hour wait.
Called again today and now it's 3.5 hour wait and now they have signs up Help wanted. :mad:
 
Kaleidopete said:
Went to the dealer owned lube place for my oil change yesterday. Couldn't do. They have 3 workers and 2 called in sick. 3 hour wait.
Called again today and now it's 3.5 hour wait and now they have signs up Help wanted. :mad:
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My friend went to a place last month that was so understaffed they didn't have anyone that was able to find the filter on his car (Jeep Compass). He had to leave and go someplace else. 😂
 
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