Car dealership annoyance

Posted on June 7, 2006
Filed Under Ranting

I’ve had my SSR for a little more than a year now. It runs great. Looks great. Excellent on gas milage… ok, I may have made that last part up…

Two weeks ago on my way in to work the door handle on the inside driver’s side broke. It didn’t come off or anything, but, it did stop performing it’s function of opening my door. I called the service department at the dealership where I leased the car and explained what the situation was. They set me up with an appointment for this morning. On my way in to work I had my buddy meet me at the dealership. While I’m inside meeting with the technician I explain again what the trouble is. He says to me, “Ahh. There is a bulletin going around about that. We’ve replaced several already.”

Midway through the day I called to see what the status was. If my car would be ready today or if it was going to be until tomorrow before I could pick it up. The technician explains that he doesn’t have the parts to fix it and has called around and nobody has the parts. He has to order them. It’s going to take 1 to 2 weeks to arrive. I tell him that I’ll come pick up my car and I hang up the phone.

As I sat at work bummed that my car was going to be injured for another couple weeks, something dawned on me. Why is it that they didn’t make sure they had the parts for my repair before I showed up for my appointment? Now, I know what you are saying, how could he know what parts he needed before you bring in the car? Well, I have an answer for that. He said that there is a bulletin going around about the issue I’m having and that he’s replaced several already. To me that means that they have a pretty good guess as to what parts are going to be needed. Hey, here’s an idea… if there is a bulletin going around about a specific issue with a specific model of car, how about making sure you have a few of those parts on hand over the next few months when it is most likely that people are going to be finding out about the problem and coming in to have theirs repaired?

I’m lucky it’s only my door handle. If it was some part that rendered the car undriveable, I guess I’d be shit out of luck.

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