Posted on 10/09/2012 4:01:59 PM PDT by detective
When you own a sports car, you inevitably get a little paranoid about how it's treated when in the care of strangers. One South Carolina man was worried enough that when he took his 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS in for service at a Chevy dealer, he hid a voice recorder in the car. He was right to be worried: The recorder caught mechanics doing burnouts and discussing how to make the owner pay for a ruined clutch the car didn't have before coming in. Now the Internet Justice League has taken the wheel.William Clark says he took his Camaro to Best Chevrolet-Kia in Easley, S.C. for a clunking noise in the car's six-speed manual transmission. After a previous visit to a different dealer, his Camaro had died shortly after Clark retrieved it; while he suspected the staff at that dealership of joyriding, he had no proof at the time.
This time, the voice recorder hidden in the door pocket catches employees doing several burnouts and hard launches in the Camaro; Smith later says the techs drove it harder in 20 minutes than he had in three years. Once back in the shop, the mechanics realize the Camaro's clutch has been fried, and come up with a plan to blame the damage on Smith, saying to "write it up as him buying a (expletive) clutch," while saying another part failed under warranty so that General Motors would pay for its replacement.
(Excerpt) Read more at autos.yahoo.com ...
I loathe taking my car to a dealership. I have a local guy who has worked on my cars 20+ years. Family business; his son is taking over for him, and his grandson is working there.
Dealerships will rip you off. They don’t know you from Joe Dirt.
I’ve had good service from my Ford dealership.
I bought a brand new Chevy Nova many years ago. It never drove right and I took it back to the dealer several times and they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. The last time I put a few of my blond hairs in places that they would be disturbed if they actually were looking for what was wrong. They were still there.
I didn’t do anything about it and I drove that car for 11 years but no one but me could drive it, I just figured it out. I have only bought one more new car after that and now wouldn’t ever buy a new one.
When I dealt with a Ford dealer in Columbia, SC, they seemed to do a good job.
Now we are a Toyota household and their service seems really good.
My wife had a couple of Saturns and the Saturn people seemed like a good group.
Every dealership is different. Some are better than others. Under the circumstances the dealer should have installed a new clutch at no charge but they were under no obligation to buy back a three year old car as the owner apparently requested.
The dealer and service were great on the last new car I bought.
It was a Hornet Hatchback with a levi’s interior.
Nice, huh?
They suck but, driving like that for 20mins should not burn out a clutch.
LOL!
I wonder which ones Obama closed?
I have had a similar experience and have both photographic and voice evidence where Ford employees from two different dealerships went out and dogged the crap out of my Raptor during the post-service test drive.
We must go to the same mechanic. I have known my mechanic, his sons and grandsons for 50 years, and I trust him, or he wouldn’t be in business this long. Even though my son-in-law is a mechanic at the dealership where I buy my cars, I still take it to my mechanic, even though I trust my son-in-law to know what he’s doing, too. My mechanic must be doing something right. He has 14 service bays!
My relationship with my Saturn dealership was practically like family (bought 5 new in ~15 years), and the fact that most of the people remained there when Saturn was thrown under the bus by GM and the government was the only reason I bought a Chevy truck, which a year and 36K miles later appears to be a winner... Of course, them practically giving them away a year ago helped too ;-)
Mr. BADwrench.
We have GM trucks and Volvo cars in the family and the GM service has been routinely skanky and awful regardless of where we’ve had it done and the Volvo service has been first-rate both in California (Turner) and in Salt Lake City (Garff).
The average age of vehicles on the road has climbed to 11 years during the Baraqqi Depression. This is even with Ca$h for Clunkers taking 700,000 aged vehicles off the road.
If you figure 15,000 miles per year (not uncommon) then the average car has over 150,000 miles.
No wonder there is good business fixing these.
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