Dealing with Mr. Monkeywrench--need advice

[deerehunter/operator]

As a service manager at a GM garage my only advice to you is to try and remember that not every dealership is out to get you and there are lots of honest folks working at dealerships. If you go in there with the accusations and an attitude you are going to get treated as such. If you give them a chance to remedy a situation that MIGHT be the result of poor workmanship, they may do so no problem.

[Diamondpilot]

My GM dealer tried to tell me that the injectors were not covered on my 9 month old 2005 Dmax. They claimed they were part of the emmisons system and that was not covered.

Chris

[JDgreen227]

As a service manager at a GM garage my only advice to you is to try and remember that not every dealership is out to get you and there are lots of honest folks working at dealerships. If you go in there with the accusations and an attitude you are going to get treated as such. If you give them a chance to remedy a situation that MIGHT be the result of poor workmanship, they may do so no problem.

Before retiring I was in the customer service type of work and would never come right out and accuse a shop of doing careless or sloppy work UNLESS I was positive it was their doing. Perhaps ten years ago we took one of our cars to a GM shop (not the one I have an issue with) and when my wife drove it home I found much of the work carelessly done, many missing fasteners on the firewall, loose heater hose clamps (screw type), the air filter plenum hose was permitting unfiltered air to enter the fuel injection system, and other slipshod things from a too-hurried mechanic. I took the car back the following day and gave them a REALLY hard time and they took it back in and fixed the issues and gave me a coupon for a free oil change (WOW BFD) like I would go back there again? Never did.

For what one pays for service work today it had d*** better be 100% right, problem is that 95% of the people who work on cars are in such a hurry they don't care about doing good work, all they care about is beating the flat rate time so shops make more profit.

[JDgreen227]

My GM dealer tried to tell me that the injectors were not covered on my 9 month old 2005 Dmax. They claimed they were part of the emmisons system and that was not covered.

Chris

WTF???!!!! Emissions systems should have a warranty as good or better than the warranty on mechanical components !!!

[deerehunter/operator]

If you thought that "95% of the people who work on cars are in such a hurry they dont care about doing good work" then why in the world did you take it somewhere to have it fixed. Sounds like you know more than enough to fix it yourself. Or did you think you found a mechanic that fell into your other 5%?

[dfkrug]

Luckily my vehicles are very trouble free but we do have a BMW that seem
to like to go to the shop about once every few months for something silly.

Oh, my condolences, Chris. Our 98 BMW M3 had all sorts of bizarre failures. Fortunately, I
was able to fix them all. The only time I dealt with the dealer was when I found a service
bulletin and tried to get them to honor it. Despite escalating it to the service manager,
I could not get it fixed, so I lived with it. No more B-Ms for me.

As for emissions warranties, the Feds require major components to be covered for 8y/80K
mi on post-95 cars/light trucks. And fuel injectors are NOT emissions components.

[JDgreen227]

If you thought that "95% of the people who work on cars are in such a hurry they dont care about doing good work" then why in the world did you take it somewhere to have it fixed. Sounds like you know more than enough to fix it yourself. Or did you think you found a mechanic that fell into your other 5%?

BECAUSE today's cars are so (censored) complicated with electronic gizmos and doo-dads and computerized crap you need specialized diagnostic equipment to tell what makes the "check engine" light come on. For what it is worth, this was the first time since 2003 ANY of our four vehicles have gone to a shop for work, we have a 1993, a Y2K, and a pair of 2004's (all GM) and I have done all repair and maintenance work on them I possibly can. Really hard to track down a lot of what can go wrong on today's cars. The repair manuals I have for the car in question (2004 Saturn L-300) list 135 Diagnostic Trouble Codes that can be accessed by a home do it yourselfer, but here are many, many more than can only be accessed by a dealership. Frickin' inane. WHY ARE VEHICLES SO COMPLEX????

[kenmac]

You can buy an inexpensive scan tool. I have 1 and repair all of my vehicles using this tool

[JDgreen227]

You can buy an inexpensive scan tool. I have 1 and repair all of my vehicles using this tool

Thank you, but although I have such a tool, it did not register one of the 135 DTC's listed in my manual...meaning the car had to go to a repair facility.

[Bird]

As a service manager at a GM garage my only advice to you is to try and remember that not every dealership is out to get you and there are lots of honest folks working at dealerships. If you go in there with the accusations and an attitude you are going to get treated as such. If you give them a chance to remedy a situation that MIGHT be the result of poor workmanship, they may do so no problem.

Well said.