About three months ago I took my car into the dealer and asked for the 40K service. Not cheap, its a $500 piece of work.
When I took it in I did say it wasn’t running right.
I left the car at 8 am in the morning, 5pm at night they call me and tell me I need new front and rear brake pads. OK exasperated I say do it and they finish the job that night.
I picked up the car and immediately notice the noise I was hearing was still there if not worse. I had so much hassle with the dealer I couldn’t imagine going back, as a non car person can you imagine I was actually a little scared of going back to them they were so unpleasant.
I have just taken it to another dealer and they find that the driver’s rear wheel bearing is completely shot, its under warranty so they fix it AND do a test drive. I pick up the car and silence while driving it is immense.
I didn’t specifically say what I felt was wrong in the original service but if they were working with the brakes AND they claimed to have done a major service shouldn’t the dealer have detected the problem?
Do I have any right to be angry, was the original service done properly?
If it wasn’t done properly should I contact the dealer where the problem arose and ask for some resolution?
My first thought is to tell you not to insert a car with a driveability problem into a scheduled mainteance interval hoping that the scheduled mainteance cures the driveability problem. My feeling is it is best to attack the driveability issue alone. In addition I would check and see how they did with the real reason I put my car into service before I authorized more work.
I interpet you saying “the car was not running right” as meaning something along the lines of the engine was not running right. Are you saying that you consider a car that is making a strange noise as “not running right”? if yes I can understand how things got confused.
Did it go like this, “I am here for a 40K service and by the way the car is not running right” I am all for letting the mechanic make the diagnosis but being this brief is brief to the extreme. If a Service Advisor gave me this car to work on and said “Oh by the way the customer says the car is not running right” I myself could easily have my attention directed to a driveability issue, not a strange noise issue.
the car wasn’t running properly, it seemed to me that the engine was racing but that just could have been the noise effect.
Being told at 3:30 pm they hadn’t even started looking at my car added to my anxiety with this dealership which had started when they gave me a 12 yr old loaner car.
so is your point of view that while looking at the car close enough to inspect the brakes a broken wheel bearing was not easily detected. I had the service planned when the noise started, I had thought having a major inspection of the car would detect things wrong with it.
I do see your point and your logic but I also know you sometimes must place a car in for diagnosis and repair of a specfic problem. If the Advisor calls you and says “we feel that your concern will be solved when we do the things listed in a 40K service” then it is them making the call that your drivability issue is a mainteance related item. After getting the word from the Advisor that they want to deal with your drivability concern by doing mainteance you can (and should) ask how certain they are this will cure your concern.You will probably get a “this is where we must start” answer and I don’t see a racing engine being cause by any type of needed mainteance that I know of (unless they include a throttle body cleaning or work with the idle control system mainteance). What did they do to cure the racing you detected?
You are also correct that it speaks very poorly or the shop to call you up and say you need brake pads and some type of brake rotor work and miss a bearing that is noisy. This does boarder on negligence.