overheard at the dealer today

[Andrew Duane USG]

Hairy green toads from Mars made TheRingmeister at aol.com say:

> working at an Audi dealer, I can tell you from firsthand, 
> prior-to-my-employment experience that they're luckily not all this way.  
> This is absolutely intolerable activity by a dealer service dept... or any 
> department for that matter.  I had been going to the dealer i now work at for 
> about 5 years prior to coming on as an Audi Brand Specialist, and I drive 
> about 35 miles to get there, 34 miles past my local "dealership", and I use 
> that term loosely, because of similar "experiences" there.

I'm sure we all have stories to tell about a dealer that shouldn't
be in business. Mine was the "dealer" I bought my car from who
refused to do ANYTHING about my auto tranny dropping into 4th with
a thunk that could make my CD player skip.

It only happened on the 3rd->4th shift. His "solution"?

	"You do know that you're not supposed to put the
	 car in 'DRIVE' until you are up to speed on the
	 highway, right?"

I had to escalate to an AoA rep for that one. Oh, the real
solution? It was dirty tranny fluid. A $30 change at my REAL
mechanic and it now shifts flawlessly.

My mother, with her 2-month old A4Q had a non-local dealer sit
on the car for 6 days when the oil pressure warning lit up 200
miles from home. She had to rent a car for a week (not covered,
of course). The dealer told her it was just low a quart of oil
and sent her on her way 6 days later. BTW, it was *NOT* low on
oil, that had been checked twice.

When the problem reappeared a couple of weeks later at home,
her local dealer found the problem in 15 minutes: a shot oil
pump. The first dealer didn't even look, and sent her on her
way in a ticking time bomb.


My question is: how do we help get these people out of business?
Surely AoA must have a vested interest in disciplining dealers that
defraud customers and refuse to perform warranty repairs. Is there
someone we can talk to about these abuses?

-- 

Andrew L. Duane (JOT-7)			duane at zk3.dec.com
Compaq Computer Corporation		(603)-884-1294
110 Spit Brook Road
M/S ZKO3-3/U14
Nashua, NH    03062-2698

Only my cat shares my opinions, and she's too psychotic to express it