Excuses overheard at the dealership.

IH8RDS said:
We have a guy in our club that has a Rubicon and went through a doosey of a time with them. The dealership accutually saw the club sticker on his Jeep and went to the website to find pictures to use aginst him. Then they sent a memo to all of the local dealerships and pointed them to our website.

Heres the thread on it

http://www.mpjai.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1832


funny thing on this one.....It wasn't broke where they told him it was!!!!!!

2 places said he broke a ring gear, come to find out they never opened the dif!!!
 
I worked at a Chevy dealer in the parts dept. A guy strolled up to the counter and asked for a price on the "kit" to make his 2WD pick up, 4WD. . I looked at him (trying not to laugh) and said there was no such kit. He then informed me that the sales dept had told him that if he later wanted 4WD he could simply change his 2WD to 4WD with a "kit" from the parts dept.... I always loved that one.

I had a Z24 that developed a bad knock. checked the oil, it was a little down. didnt drive it again until i drove it to the dealer. Dealer sold me an oil change and tried to sell me a "oil flush" but that the oil change would take care of it (I knew it wouldnt). Picked up the car, drove it 1/2 mile and it began Knocking very loud. I did a U-turn and kept it in 2nd gear at about 4500rpm back to the dealer.. rolled in making a rediculous amount of noise (the customers on the lot and in the showroom liked it). I walked in and tossed the keys at the advisor. I said I actually wanted them to fix it (still under warranty). the next day I was told it had spun a bearing and it was my fault because I ran it out of oil. They also mentioned there was an aftermarket oil filter on it and they wouldnt cover it because of poor maintenance. I asked how that could be, and that THEY had just changed the oil the day before... silence.... I'll check into this... Mr.Smith we will cover the engine replacement....
Last Chevy I owned.. traded it in 2 wks later. new engine and rebuilt transaxle and all...
 
OK. When we bought the wife's '99 Grand Caravan in Conroe we added on the 100,000 mile Chrysler extended warranty. I asked the warranty guy very specifically if the extended coverage was an actual extension of the factory warranty or were there any differences in items covered? He looked me straight in the face and told me that the extended warranty was exactly the same as the original factory warranty.

38,000 miles later: an aluminum pipe in the cooling system corroded through and sprayed atifreeze all over the driver's side floor. Take it to the dealer in Huntsville (cause the Conroe service deptartment turned out to be useless, plus we live just outside Huntsville). The service manager tells me the piece of pipe is not covered under the extended warranty. I asked him if the pipe had failed at 35,000 miles would the factory warranty have replaced it. Absolutely, he says, but the extended warranty is not as extensive. I told him that the guy down in Conroe who sold us the extended warranty told us that it was the same as the factory warranty.

His response? "I wish they'd quit sayin' that!"

I will say that the extended did replace both heads twice as well as the lifters once. Stay away from the 3.0L V6. I think they don't even use it anymore.
 
Holy cr@pola, the hassles we went through with Pontiac. Before the Grand Caravan the wife drove an '89 Grand Am with the DOHC V4 Quadrawhatever. I took it to a Chevy dealer, thinking GM is GM. He says they got nobody can work on that engine. Eventually sold that piece of cr@p for $275 scrap. The scrap dealer was looking it over and saw a chip out of the driver's side headlight lens. He says too bad. Them headlight lens was worth more than anything else on the car. Cost me $50 on the deal.

When we sold that thing for scrap I was waiting for a call back from the service manager about a replacement instrument panel. They had tried to fix a non-functional odometer and had spent days and days over three or four visits, on 12 month 12,000mile shop warranty from the first try at fixing it, putting in a number of salvage panels. All to no effect. I worked them hard, demanding a loaner every time I took it in on the follow up visits. Finally sold the thing to the disapointed scrap dealer while we were waiting for a call back on a brand new panel that had been lost in shipping for weeks (riiiight :wink: :wink: ) I kept hoping that I would get the call back so I could say oh yeah. well you can talk the scrap yard about getting that cr@ppy POS to your shop cause I sold the beitch POS and I don't need your d@mn instrument panel no more.

They never did call. You don't suppose they were waiting on me to call them for service they should have performed the fisrt time, do you?:)
 
bjoehandley said:
Last year we had a pain in the neck customer (one that I'm happy to report hasn't come back in since this incident) come in and start reaming me out because we sold him a aluminum Dynamite T-Maxx skid plate and it was a piece of junk. He told me that We should have know that He was going to jump the Maxx over his garage and should have to have sold him something stronger than the piece of crap. I damn neer bit my tongue of trying not to tell him where to shove said skidplate. Oh if it was only my store..........................................................

That guy wouldn't have happened to make a video about that would he? I've seen a video online of an RC car jumping a house your story reminded me of that.
 
As we seem to be getting a bit farther afield, I am reminded of when I had bought a new 1993 Honda Accord LX. That was the "mid-" model -- had a/c and electric windows, but not some of the fawncy stuff found on the EX. My ex-wife had an EX, and I realized in comparing them that hers had a rear sway bar ... and mine did not.

So I went to the dealer to order up the parts to put a rear sway bar on my Honda. Parts guy, of course, had no listing because the LX didn't come with a rear bar. "Just sell me the parts for an EX," says I. No, he assured me that wouldn't work ... although he couldn't tell me why not.

So I walked into the showroom, found the general manager, and told him his parts guy was an idiot because he wouldn't sell me $300+ worth of parts. GM said he would look into it and give me a call.

About a week later, he did indeed call. He told me that he had personally investigated, and that he had confirmed absolutely that I could not just bolt the rear bar from an EX onto my LX. The reason, he said, was that the EX had "dual exhaust."

So I rang up my brother, who at the time was manager of a Speedy Muffler shop, and I asked. He almost died from laughing, and then confirmed what I already knew ... the exhaust systems were exactly the same. The LX had a single muffler with a single outlet, and the EX has a single muffler of the exact same size and shape, with twin CHROME outlets.

M-O-R-O-N

This same dealership later tried to tell me that the Honda Passport was NOT mechanically the same as the Isuzu Rodeo because Honda had demanded twenty-two changes to the front suspension. Of course, they couldn't tell me what even one of these differences might have been -- and I had already been under both vehicles and knew they were identical.
 
its interesting that Jeep builds its name on the fact that they have a transfercase and "off road prowess" being the real SUV - but about 5 months ago, my dad was looking for a new car, and i talked him into taking a look at a jeep - just to take a look...

we walk onto the lot, and i ask to look at a WJ. The salesperson is dumbfounded... he has no idea what i am talking about...

I tell him that i am looking for an older (00-04) bodystyle grand cherokee, and the dealship has NONE on the lot...

Then he tries to explain how the Rubicon is the best off road vehicle out of the box, my dad (6'6" and 275) sits in one, and isnt comfortable (shocking really.....)

Then he trys to get us to sit in a WK, and i laugh at him... My dad cant fit in that either...

but the interesting part is that EVERYONE in the off road community who takes jeeps offroad, Jeeps main marketing point, calls the jeeps by their body style - XJ, TJ, LJ, MJ, WK, KJ, ZJ, SJ, WJ - and neither of the 3 sales people that i talked to that day had any idea what i was talking about...

i realise that most girls that buy rubicons only engage their lockers ont he test drive to see what they do - but still, if the following of the company calls it that, you would think that the dealership staff might have a clue what we are talking about.
 
XJ_ranger said:
but the interesting part is that EVERYONE in the off road community who takes jeeps offroad, Jeeps main marketing point, calls the jeeps by their body style - XJ, TJ, LJ, MJ, WK, KJ, ZJ, SJ, WJ - and neither of the 3 sales people that i talked to that day had any idea what i was talking about...

You think that is bad, try calling around to buy a Jeep that had both Select-Trac and Command-Trac available.

The sales jerks don't know the difference but will adamantly say they have one on the lot for you to look at...and then you drive 1.5 hours into another province/state to look at said promised vehicle and it is not what you want because of the transfer case.

Don't ask how I know this. :)

Quite honestly, both of these instances are perfect examples of how the sales critters and marketroids further up the chain have completely lost touch with what they are selling.

I am 100% certain that D-C's goal at this point in time is to just milk as much as possible out of the "mystique" of the Jeep marque in order to smoothly make the product mirror the existing Dodge products. Once there is a true Durango/whatever=Commander/whatever at the sheet metal level with different front clips they can kill the Jeep marque without anyone noticing.

In the meantime those that want a real "jeep" (note small "J") will have moved on to other products.

Latest scuttlebutt I've heard is the Hummer H4 will be a TK-esque vehicle. I read it on the web so it must be true, right? At the prices they charge for new vehicles these days it almost makes sense to drop $20-$30 on a restored example of your favourite, old, real 4x4 and go from there. Hell, hook up with the right builder and you can get it with D60s or whatever right from the start.

It's almost a shame that some third party (Goodmark, etc.) didn't buy the stampings for Jeeps as they had been EOL'ed.

Oh well, just remember, there's no money in buying new vehicles so it doesn't really matter anyway.
 
That guy wouldn't have happened to make a video about that would he? I've seen a video online of an RC car jumping a house your story reminded me of that.

I wouldn't be the least bit suprised Mooch, I hear tales of BIG air all the time, now how many are true and how many are BS is anybodys guess.............

You think that is bad, try calling around to buy a Jeep that had both Select-Trac and Command-Trac available.
I think Cherokee owners are the only ones who have any clue on that, I was told the '98 Limited I currently own wasn't a Selec-Trac via e-mail, yet when we went down to look at it, guess what we found in the truck! I also had a salesman at a local Chrysler/Jeep go blank faced when I told him I was glad to see that the Wrangler Rubicon still had the live axle and straight six, then admitted I had totally lost him on that?!?!, some Jeep salesman, huh? I also talked to a woman about her then new to the market first gen Durango, the salesman told her that it was based off a passenger car, not the Dakota....
 
bjoehandley said:
I wouldn't be the least bit suprised Mooch, I hear tales of BIG air all the time, now how many are true and how many are BS is anybodys guess.............

I also had a salesman at a local Chrysler/Jeep go blank faced when I told him I was glad to see that the Wrangler Rubicon still had the live axle and straight six, then admitted I had totally lost him on that?!?!, some Jeep salesman, huh? I also talked to a woman about her then new to the market first gen Durango, the salesman told her that it was based off a passenger car, not the Dakota....

Yep, the car salesman knows one thing, to tell people what they want to hear. Realize that a lot of people aren't concerned with or don't understand how their car works, only that they want something "like a Honda" or "an SUV w/ 6 seats".
 
I sold GMC's in San Antonio for awhile. I had this very good customer who had bought several cars from me. I sold he a Brand New 94 Jimmy S-10 4x4. One week later he came and picked up his plates. He left and at the first intersection he was T-bone on the passenger side. Hit hard enough to wringle ever panel not hit and bust the rear axle out of the Jimmy. It was totalled.

A week later the service adviser I always used came in and said,"you know they are fixing that Jimmy?"

"What? Is was totaled how are they fixing it?"

"They are fixing some of it under warranty to bring the insurance cost down. read what it says on the ticket."

The ticket read, "Customer states--Pulls very hard to the right"

In the long run it ended up being totaled. A phone call or two made have been made :-)
 
When I was building my 8.8, the u-joint flange/adapter on the axle was broke. So I go down to the dealership to pick up a new one, sounds easy enough. He starts asking me what is the VIN on the vehicle. What does that have to do with anything? He wouldn't sell me the flange. So went down to TarHeel 4WD, asked for it, they had it on the counter in under 20 secs. Perfect fit.
 
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