[Vwdiesel] Age, Diesel History and BONUS TDI Tragedy

[Erik Lane]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tad <tadc at europa.com> wrote:

> Not all dealers are frightfully incompetent, but enough are that it throws
> a
> bad light on the lot of them.
>
>
Yup, and in my experience, *one* is enough to make them all look bad! Simply
because they are the representatives of the entire company, and if you're
paying the extra dime to have the dealer look at it, you shouldn't have to
worry about corruption or ignorance with respect to their own cars!

That you do quickly sours me on the whole idea! In my experience across the
board with various car company dealerships, it seems that somewhere in the
neighborhood of 70-80% of them have problems in their service departments. I
have yet to have a problem with any parts departments, however. The only
thing a dealership ever gets my business with anymore is warranty work. Even
then I've had them break other things and claim that those things caused my
original problem, as well as all kinds of ridiculous claims as to what was
wrong. (The engine was shutting off, so they wanted me to let them rebuild
the tranny, at my cost, of course, rather than fix the injection pump, which
was the only thing in the whole vehicle with warranty left, but it *was* the
problem. Then they said it must be the radiator, the vacuum pump, bad turbo,
etc. Doesn't inspire confidence...)

Bear in mind that I only take really difficult problems to the dealer in the
first place, so I'm pretty rough on them as far as the percentage I stated
up top. But when they break stuff, leave other parts completely
disconnected, and try to make absurd claims that I need all these other
things worked on to pad their bill, it makes me think that it's a systemic
problem. And if they're willing to cheat in those ways, then I expect them
to cheat in other, less noticeable ways. I just don't have a very high
opinion of most of them. Even if almost every worker at a dealership is
honest and just trying to make a living, all it takes is one who is willing
to cut corners to give the whole place a rotten name. I don't think that the
people, as a whole, are crooks, but that they have a lot of pressure from
corporate offices to make certain numbers, and that some people, under that
pressure, will take the easy way and screw someone over, if they think they
can get away with it.