so today I had a customer come up in the drive and ask to talk to a tech. His issue is hardstart and misses when cold. he pulls out a copy of a page on a site simular to this one and says do you know about this reflash, then inquires about the ids softwear level to insure he gets the latist reflash. After a few min of talking with him I asked DO YOU HAVE A PROGRAMER, he said no. I do some quick checking of the codes he has stored in the pcm one of them is for the egr throttle plate.... his truck is an 06 wich did not ever have one. his flash that was in the truck was vxc4h2, wich didnt have one. I checked his milage sence the codes were last cleared 55 miles ago. Now this guys want me to be smart enugh to fix his truck and understand how it works, but dumb enugh not to know how that code was set. So my question is do I toss the guy under the bus for lieing, toss him under the bus for using a programer, or just fix his truck?

also his little printed pice of paper had his 2" lift, wheels,tires, added 2nd alternator and you guest .....it a programer listed

im taking votes here.

 

cheezit,

I think that's your business and none of ours.

 

Ya its kind of a ****ty deal when a guy lies to you on the stuff you can figure out, but i can see where the guy was commin from. What i mean buy that is with the programmer and his warrnity getting voided i can understand because its a lot of money to fix a diesel if you have to use your own check book. If i were you i would talk to the guy and make him feel stupid and see what kind of guy he is and then make your decision.

 

I agree with Will....we don't need to know.

 

the point is does this guy think we are that dumb? lets see hmmm can you fix this, do you know anything? vs. they wont know they will never figure it out, they cant be that smart.

 

People don't even get that far in their thinking. All they are hoping for is not to have to pay anything (and way too many people have no issues with lying).

I agree - w/ the others - not our business, but I would say that there is no "personal message" in the attempt to get by with it.

 

im not in warranty and i am completly up front with who ever works on my truck. i tell them that i run a race tune, what programmer i use and what i have done to try to figure out what is going on. i dont generally have that conversation with the service writer though because typically speaking the service writer is a glorified secratary that gets about 50% of what you say and relays 25% it correctly. my opinion is if the guy had a tuner and you can prove it id bring it up with him. let him know you know. if he dosent want to be honest about it turn it over to ford and let them decide. you play you pay

 

I just can't help my self, it's a sickness, I really am seeking help on this, but anyway.

Most of y'all that actually can endure reading my long posts know how much emphasis I put on someone's word. So that right there he scores low with me.

Second and a lot of people don't realize this is, if he is doing this to preserve his warranty, he is actually doing what seems an awful lot like de-frauding Ford. So that doesn't score any points with me either, if less so.

Ultimately, it's a rough choice for you, but it doesn't make your job any easier when people do that and then if you don't get it fixed right the first time, they more then likely blame you. All the techs know what I've done to my truck and they have since day one when I started modding. I've actually been rewarding by them going out of there way by being as upfront with them as I have been.

 

Thats because they all want to test drive your truck ........

I agree w/ you - The people that will lie about mods to the tech will be the first to blame all their problems on Ford and a bad engine.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some of that in there.

 

I see it as a game with the tech not being a part of it really at all, unless you count the early times when I read on here that the techs were not given the training or the time to figure out the problems. The game is between Ford and consumer ford bought an engine from International that was flawed in several ways poor placement of parts ie FICM, poor oil cooler design and sand in cooling system. Now Ford never admitted the sand problem so a coolant filter was not installed as a recall so eventually many failed some before warranty ran out some after and some more than once. The consumer is now forced to claw his way through the obstacles such as some dealerships refusing service some for good reason but many I suspect cause they were under the watchful eyes of Ford probally for too many warranty claims or just poor diagnosis. Lying is not acceptable to me but then some of the things Ford have done mainly buring there heads in the sand when problems were obviously everywhere is also not acceptable. I don't do performance mods and if you do you should accept the responsibility but then Ford doesn't seem to have accepted the responsibility either. I have 58,000 miles with just a bad FICM and small oil leak. I am now out of warranty and even though I love this truck everytime I head out on a trip I am uneasy the entire time. Would I lie to a tech " NO" but I'm leaning toward cutting the consumer some slack and try and save him as much as possible unless of course he has obviously pushed the truck to destruction. Ford should have installed the filter free of charge as a recall would have possibly saved them losing there big share of the diesel market. I just hate coming on here and hearing my engine refered as POS even by Ford Diesel owners. It's not a POS but Ford just might be..Crawling down off my soap box sorry for the ramblings...

 

no disrespect intended, like when the cop ask if you have been drinking.
You say no and drive off to a hot dinner. you say i had a 2 beers and hope he is cool enough to see you are not impaired, knowing this could turn into a few hours of blowing into the tube, walking the little line and answering the same questions 50times.
The customer don't know you , don't know that you are cool enough to fix his truck and not flag him for admitting to using a tuner. Give him a break and let him know how you feel.

 

It also probably depends on how you want to see yourself in the mirror. You might not have asked that question otherwise.

I believe the honest way is the hard and the long way, but it's always the best way. If you show him that you saw through him but that you are ready to help him, you might gain a faithful customer who might even speak positively about you to other people. I've run into some similiar issues here. The real cheaters will remain so but they always lose out at the end. You tend to weed them out with time and they're always a good subject of laugh once in a while.

Hey, I'd like to try that truck as well ...

 

You should print this thread off and hand it to him

 

Maxium has the right idea print it hand it to him and watch the color drain out of his face with the potential of the color draining out of his wallet. Eitherway you go your the guy thats got to live with it.