Ok. I have a question for you guys. I know most of you are diy'ers but i hear a lot of negative storys about dealers on this board. I am a ford tech and spent a huge amount of money to become ford certified. I know they are dealers/techs/writers out there that dont care about the customer. But just because one tech in a dealership cant properly diag a vehicle it doesn't mean other techs cann't. the dealer i work for takes alot of pride in there customer service and stands by there work. mistakes happen but its how you handle the mistake that counts. Also give us a break I didn't design your heater core to take 10 hours to replace. Alot we have to deal with information ford gives us. Ford has TSB's out that say a certain amount of vibration is normal do not attempt to repair. I may not like it but i am not able to fix some of this stuff ford designs. sorry for the long post but i'm kinda venting.
Anyway i would like to hear some postive posts where the dealer helped you out. Also if you have any suggestion on how to make dealerships better in general I would like to hear and try to use them. Thanks

 

Um... Recently I dropped my truck off to get work done to it told them i wouldn't be able to pick it up until a monday (Dropped it off on a friday) and someone had broken into my truck and stolen all of my audio stuff...

so... I'm pissed And the dealer is saying their insurance won't cover it. I kept on nagging them and finally got them to pay half of my deductable... ($250) but now my auto insurance is trying to screw me over as well...

So right now I'm out 600 bucks worth of stuff...

I will admit I like the service guys esp these two guys i talke to whenever I go in there. and I've talked to a few mechanics as well and they all seem like good guys. and the quality of their work has never let me down. But I'm a little pissed that it took a week for them to even attempt to help me out with my stolen property...

I'm still undecided as to if I will take my truck back there...
More than likely I will but I dunno...

 

A positive story....

About twenty years ago, I restored (from the ground up) a '71 F250 4X4. After two years in the restoration process, the truck was coming together beautifully. The only thing left to give it that factory show-room look was to repair/replace all the side body molding. I had managed to round-up a multitude of pieces off old junkers, but it became apparent that none of the parts were worthy enough to go on this 'as good as new' truck. I then turned to my local Ford dealership for help. I wasn't holding out too much hope, but after searching the world for two weeks (this was before the internet mind you), amazingly, my trusty Ford parts guy found some N.O.S. in an old Ford warehouse up in Canada.

Now that was customer service.

 

I work under contract as a parts driver at a Ford dealer and as you say it depends on the Tech. I worked at a Nissan and Honda dealership where the techs could hardly be trusted with an oil change!!!

Before THAT I worked for another Ford dealer (where I STILL pick up) where they actually lost their diesel certification as they fired the one tech qualified when he drove an F350 into a lift!

The dealer I am at now seems pretty good. I had someone there tell me a week ago they take pride in having a good rep in service. I DO know one tech there is an IDIOT but the rest are fine.

Would I reccomend the dealer I am at now? yes. The (Ford) one before? NO!!

Keep up the good attitude. It is noticed!!

 

Not to mention the cost to get something fixed. One stealership here wanted $58 to change a fuel filter. For a '89 150 with the 300.

 

If either B@@ill M@@@h or Mc%%%%ty Ford ever fixed one thing on my Stang or F150 while the vehicles were under warranty I wouldn't be trashing the techs. Bought a brand new stang from Mc%%%%ty in '87 and after 15 visits to service, 5 of the visits ( attempts only)to fix a leaking T5 tranny housing, I had thoughts of arson and vandalism every time I drove by the shop. I used to yell at salesmen and customers as I drove by the lot to make sure the potential customer knew that Mc%%%erty had terrible service. Does that sound reasonable? NO! They drove me mad! I had a car I couldn't drive and was always having to beg rides because the car was in the shop for the same thing over and over again. That is the kind BS that is going on in some dealers service dept's. You may work at the number one super duper Blue Oval certified shop, but my two dealers have lost a customer for good.

If I could post a pic of how the tech mangled my A/C evaporator cover on my F150 you would understand what I mean. I recently ordered a new one, if it fits I'll send the old one to you with a nice note how the tech mangled everything up and botched a 1200 dollar R12 to r134 retrofit.

 

That sucks, my stuff was jacked from my driveway 2500 dollars....

 

No alarm? Or it didn't go off?

I have an alarm but the jackasses didn't set it.

I think i want to upgrade to the kind that pages you.

The place where I bought my truck from (not the same dealer as mentioned before) stuck me pretty good as well...

When I bought my truck I was told they were going to take it in the back and shine it up and then fill up the tank. Well it rolled around the lot lookin good I get in it start driving 3 minutes down the road I realize that the tank is on E luckly enough i pull up into a gas station right when it started choking. So I go to full up the tank kind of pissed only to be suprised... theres a locking gas cap, and I only have one key...

hmmm....

I ended up going back and ripping a gas cap off another f150 and then ripping the locking cap all to hell to get it off. so yeah I have a gas cap now but I decided i'd never go back to the ford dealership.

So I think the next closest one is going to be a pretty good drive. So I'm not for sure what to do...
this sucks...

 

i'm a vw dealer ship man and have the same problems every day. we can't always by correct the first time as we want to be, good techs, bad techs will always be our problem. 10 hours for a heater core. wish that was ours . takes 2 days of non stop for ours. . had a bad water cooled alternator on a tourag , r and i motor/trans and sub frame and from under the truck. for my customer tg it was warrenty for us 3 days work."first one ever"
we are not steelerships just suffering from the high costs of running a shop like every one else. plus we suffer from the lack of good techs

 

A dealer can't be held responsible for someone breaking into your truck and stealing your personal stuff, unless they were grossly negligent. If the same thing happened at the supermarket, is the store responsible? It's why every restaurant has a sign that says, "not responsible for personal items." Was the item really stolen, or is the person looking to scam the business ("oh, no, I lost my cel phone. I KNOW, I'll say it was stolen while I was in the restroom at Denny's and make THEM pay for it!")? I have one customer that managed to find a scratch in his truck every time after we serviced it. We now go around the truck with him BEFORE we write up the service order, noting any pre-existing damage. Guess what? No more "dealer-induced" scratches. Go figure...

 

One thing I figured out a long time ago is that, the more you know about your vehicle and what might be wrong with it, the less opportunity there will be for any monkey business by the dealership (or any other shop for that matter).

In my experience, and maybe Jeff or Captain Charlie can correct me on this, the service manager of a shop is as much a promoter of shop services as he/she is a manager. In other words, it's in his or her job description to suggest to people to have things done to their vehicle while it's taking up one of the bays. Drumming up more business, so to speak, which is hardly much different than what most other commercial enterprises do, at least as I see it.

However, an informed customer usually knows more than a little bit about what they want done, what actually needs to be done, and what may be unnecessary "add ons" being pushed by an agressive SM. To use an old cliche: knowledge is power.

Regarding shop time, it is what it is, the rates are up on the wall. Pay it or don't, it's your choice. However, as I indicated, knowing what kind of time a certain repair takes (generally) will help prevent any sort of marking up based on questionable time allowances for that repair.

As for the other important stuff involved, I will quote 4.6Ranger on what - to me- seperates the good shops from the bad ones:

 

Water-cooled alternator? R&I motor and trans? Please tell me you're kidding... I guess we only think we have it bad.

 

Around my parts, once you have the keys in hand, you have accepted responsibility for the vehicle and it is your job to secure it. This means locking the vehicle and if it has an alarm, set it. If they didn't lock it, that would be negligent here. You can't stop a thief, but you can make an attempt to slow him down.
Just to make it clear, a friend of mine runs a dealership and they had some vehicles that were dropped off over the weekend stolen. They used a magnet and hook, to get the keys off the floor, through the drop slot. Since the dealership had not physically taken possesion of the keys, they weren't responsible, but if a tech would have and tossed the keys in the door, they would have been.

 

The best salespeople in any dealership are not in the showroom- they're behind the service counter. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you're aware of it when you walk through the door. Rockledge is 100% right: knowledge IS power.

 

I respect the techs at the dealerships I go to, what makes me unhappy about using their services are scheduling and policy. With only 1 exception, this has been my complaint of EVERY dealer service dept I've dealt with in the last 15 years! Here are a few to give you some idea what I mean. In each case the work was done fine, thus making me respect the techs.

"Sorry, sir - it's not our policy to take appointments for that oil change we told you we'd do for free last time we screwed you, so you'll have to sit here and wait for your car for the next 3 hours. No you can't just forget it and go home, the car is already on the lift with the oil draining."

"The F150 you JUST bought from us has a steering pump failure. We caught it before the pump shredded, but the bad news is we will need your truck for 4 days because we don't have a replacement in stock. What? Sorry, it's against our policy to give out a loaner car in these cases. No, we won't re-imburse you on the rental, contact your insurance company for that."

"We should have that fuel pump replaced in about 2 hours [12pm], you can call our shuttle service up until we close today [6pm] for a ride." Ater calling for the shuttle at 3pm and being told it quit running at 2pm, I WALKED 3 miles to the dealership only to hear, "Your car is not ready. We had to take the technician off to work on a priority customer [he had a NEW Honda] so your car will be ready by 12pm tomorrow. Sorry sir, it's not my concern how you will get home today and we don't provide loaners in these cases." In other words screw you and your 1989 Prelude, buy a new car if you want respect.

No wonder I've learned how to do most repairs myself, even if it costs me more and I don't do the job as cleanly!