| rev:text
| - Took my new Corolla there for a simple oil change awhile back. The car was in good condition, never had any problems before and no other repair shop had ever mentioned anything being wrong with the car.
So I was a bit surprised when, while waiting in the lobby for the oil change to finish, a "manager" came in and told me they found that my brake pads needed to be replaced and that they'd just go ahead and knock that out for me. He tells me this and begins walking back out of the lobby before I responded, as if it my agreement to the service was irrelevant.
I tell him to hold on and him how much it'd cost. He says he's not sure, he'd have to look up the pricing, in a rushed sort of way, as if he's got no time for these trivial questions.
So I say no thanks just do the oil change. He acts like I just signed my death warrant, as the car is almost not safe to drive, he says. I insist and he leaves.
After another hour, another guy comes in, says my car is already and hands me my keys. He mentions the brakes again. I should come back and get them replaced soon, because "the pads are almost gone, and I'd imagine you're gonna start hearing the rotors squealing against metal in a few months." He tries to get me to setup an appointment. I decline again and leave.
A few days later I'm driving and open my glove box. A panel falls out from the back and gets stuck in the glove box door hinge. I pull over, check it out. There is now a hole in the back of my glove box that the panel was covering. Looks like an air intake. Strange I think. I try to put it back on but it doesn't stay.
The whole experience at this dealership seemed really shady at this point. Their hard handed sales tactics. My cover falling off in some random spot, as if they were messing around places they shouldn't have been. I conclude that I should probably never go back there due to the vibe alone.
3 months pass. Lo and behold my brakes start squealing. "Huh" I think, "they were being honest about that after all. ". Just like they told me was going to happen. Well, I figured I should take it back there and get it fix. But I delayed for a bit because I was busy with work.
2 weeks after my brakes started squealing I start getting repeated calls from the customer service department of the dealership trying to setup an appointment for me to change out my brake pads. Turns out they must have put a note in the system to schedule me for an appointment about 3.5 months out, even though I told them I wasn't interested. I ignored their calls because how swamped I was at work, but planned on going back to them and getting the work done.
Then my car window gets smashed in one night. I'm forced to finally take off work and get my car window fixed. I call up this dealership and ask for the cost of a window replacement. They quote me $300ish and it will take them a week for the part to come in. I call around some other places and find a local mechanic that will do it for $150 the next day.
So I take my car to this local mechanic to take care of the window. I also tell him to replace my brake pads, as now the car is really squealing everytime i touch the brakes.
After he's done he goes over the work he did with the window. Then he tells me about the brakes. He says he didn't change the break pads because they had plenty of pad left. The squealing I was hearing was because the brake pads had "glazed over". Why? As he points to the brakes he says "they glazed over on the back because the front brakes were readjusted to not engage. They were loosened. This caused you back brakes to do all the work. Due to the extra stress and heat of doing all the braking, the back pads glazed over. That's why you hear that squealing. Similar sound as when your brake pads are gone." He didn't understand why my front brakes had been readjusted like that.
I couldn't believe it. The coincidence of this happening was too great to not believe that this dealership had intentionally messed with my brakes in order to get my car back into their shop. The fact they had explicitly told me the brake pads were gone, when the brake pads had plenty of thickness and life to them was proof that they had intentionally lied to me.
I was pretty sickened by this. I thought about going to some consumer reporting agency with this, doing something. But time passed. Work kept me exhausted and I let it just fade away from thought.
Fast forward to last week. I have a coworker who is always mentioning on facebook and while chatting with me that her car is in the shop. She had this nice new sion that was only a year and a half old, but was always having problems. She says "I just happened to get a lemon". This has gone on for many months. Finally last week I see her Facebook status update "car's back in the shop :(" but this time she happened to link where she was. And guess what dealership she was at? That's right.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but don't go here.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)