Bad Dealership Diagnosis

[mikec03]

I drove my ' 95 Sub to a local store and when I came out, it would turn over but it would not start. I brought one of my other cars over, jumped it, and tried for an hour to start it. No luck. The stores were closing and I figured it was a serious problem, so I had it towed to a dealership.

 

The next day, at the dealership it wouldn't even turn over! The mechanic said that the starter was bad and needed replacement for $530 and another $60 for a bad battery connector. But it turned out that there was nothing wrong with the starter; the reason it wouldn't turn over was that the ignition voltage to the solenoid was zero. This mechanic hadn't even bothered to check the power and ignition voltage to the starter!

 

Can you imagine the embarrassment if I had told them to replace the starter and then the mechanic would later have to come to the customer [me] and say that they need another $100+ to find the real problem! This is really shameful. It would only have taken him 60 sec to check the voltages.

 

I had it towed home and eventually found that my wacky after market door lock/anti theft system was locking out the ignition voltage. And finally, the real problem, as I have already posted, was that the fuel pump had failed, which I fixed for $50.

 

I guess that the lesson is to be afraid, very afraid when going to a dealership.

[xoomer]

Not Necessarily, you have to remember that dealerships only know what you tell them. If you have an Aftermarket alarm installed tell them.

 

When, Or IF I buy a New car, I will have it serviced at the Dealership for everything. Because I have seen what the Dealership will do for you if you are a good customer. this was at the Kia Dealership I worked for, we had two one in Oregon and one in Seattle, a customer had his car towed in at 120K with a seized engine. After researching a little bit we found that He had done every single service with the Dealership in Oregon. We Asked KIA to replace the engine under warranty and they did it.

 

Mechanics and Dealers can be scary if you don't have a history with them.

 

ZM

[Cougar]

There are good and bad stories about dealer service. When it comes to problems with the electrical systems of cars I think a lot of service shops don't have techs as qualified in that area as the they do in the mechanical area. To have a tech well qualified in both areas is a big plus to a shop.

 

I had a problem with the right side radio speaker in my van that the dealer tried to fix under warranty. After a couple of visits to the service shop to have them first replace the radio and then the speaker they still couldn't find the trouble. I took the van home and then decided to fix it myself even though I had a warranty. After a bit of looking around I found a connector in the door jamb that even the factory manual didn't show as being there. I pushed on it and it clicked. Problem solved, connector wasn't pushed in all the way at the factory. I wrote to the factory about the manual problem and they revised it. This was a very easy fix yet the shop spent many hours and replaced parts needlessly trying to find and fix the trouble all due to improper testing in my opinion. I think this kind of thing happens fairly often in a number of shops.

[StructEngineer]

I've seen this many times before. Love it when a dealership is so certain about a particular problem....the experts about the car, and then claim after the fact that their guess is as good as anyone's when you find out they got it wrong. They usually guess at the most expensive problem first. Lots of shady dealers out there.

 

Dealers LOVE P0420 codes. My inlaws brought their forester to get the cat replaced (against my recommendation) due to a P0420 code. At least try putting on new O2 sensors first. Then to make matters worse on the 5min drive home, the CV boot directly above the replaced cat spontaneously splits in half throwing grease everywhere. The boot was obviously and visually cut by the dealer, but upon taking it back they had the balls to say it was just coincidence and would not even provide a discount. just amazing

[mikec03]

It wouldn't have done any good to tell the mechanic about the after market alarm system because there was NO indication that the alarm system was activated. If the mechanic was lackadaisical enough not to check the voltages before pronouncing that the starter was bad, he's not going to pay any attention to the possibility of a lock out by the alarm system.

 

Fool that I am, I assumed that the mechanic's diagnosis was correct and first replaced the starter after I had the car towed to my home. After that didn't make any difference, I spent a half a day trying to find a short in the ignition wire. In my defense, there was no indication that the alarm system had [partially] activated. Finally, out of desperation, I found the fuse for the alarm system and pulled it, not really thinking that it would do any good. Fortunately, the contacts in this wacky alarm system are normally closed, and the ignition voltage was restored.

 

I would not let this dealership fill the air in my tires.

[bheinen74]

its not the dealerships fault for not knowing anything about a crappy aftermarket alarm that they are not supposed to have to mess with. Why do you expect them to know anything about a crappy aftermarket alarm? Where would they get training on fixing something that does not belong in their car.

Sounds like they still fixed it. If i was working on a car with a non-oem alarm, i would demand it to be unsinstalled, at the owners expense. That would have fixed the problem, minus the fuel pump eh.