Today was one of those regular days with some twists.
At the outset, I left early to go get the “unfixed” motorhome. Yes they think they found a leak, no they can’t fix it. To explain, they found that it appears to leak at the “crimp end” of one of the long hoses that runs from the compressor to the front of the vehicle. Unfortunately most shops can only “replace” the hoses not rebuild them and to do that would require pulling a 36 ft. length of hose that runs through the center of the framework. Not an easy task to just pull it out and then the other end, how the hell would you get one back in? Beyond that, no one makes hoses that long around here. So the option is to take it to a specialist shop that can probably rebuild the end of the hose with out removal.
With that I picked it up and brought it home, by way of the fairgrounds and there I got a free dump of the waste tanks. I hadn’t gotten that done when we got home so it was past time.
Once I got it home and backed in front of the barn, I was determined to also get on the nasty front and the rest of the coach that had not been washed since we got back either… if you remember I had some huge bug spots on the front from the recent trip and now, after all this time they were baked in/on and would be a real pain to get off.
Not only that but with all the “mechanic” work done on it I now have a really dingy greasy hand set of prints in numerous spots.
I got out the power washer and some soap/wax cleaner and proceeded to scrub it down. I started on the front and got some of the big stuff rubbed off but it was going to take several trips over to get it off. I made a trip around the unit getting what I could off and most of it was just some road grime that came off easy and the last wax job was still in tact as it was beading up pretty good in most spots but the areas where it got really greasy hands on it and all that were ground in and they were not coming out.
It is hard top get a picture of the grease spots but this one comes close to showing the darker areas that were “grease” stained… I got about half of that off and still have a bunch to work on. At least the big bug spots are gone.
I scrubbed until I couldn’t do much more and decided to head in for lunch and a few errands. One of them was to “check my winning key” sent to me by Barry Sanders Supercenter. It claimed that I had won something, maybe, and I need to bring that key to check the lock box. When we got there it was a zoo, and they were “mass identifying” customers. By that I mean they wanted to fill out a full page of information (the sales manager called it an application?) before they would check to see if I had won. My son having worked in a dealership jumped in and said that they didn’t need all that, we just wanted to check for a winner and the sales manager then promptly said, “I will show you the door” in like, get the hell out!. We left but I grabbed my “winning flyer” to take along just as a reminder of – they all pull this scam and it is just to gather information or get people to show up so they can “high pressure” you into a possible sale. They would probably hound us to no end if we had filled out that paper and from all things we can find it is not totally legal for them to be doing that. I am sure they have it figured out and fine tuned so they are protected but it is a problem that should be stopped.
We went on to lunch after this little fiasco, and it wasn’t too bad. Not great as we just always pick the fast food places, cause we are cheap… ha!
When I got home I was still a little miffed at the attitude of the Sales Manager so I sent an email to the local paper editor to check out the scam and also sent a complaint to Chrysler about the treatment we got at one of their dealerships. I was totally surprised to get a response back in a few hours and this is what I got back.
Thank you for contacting the Chrysler Customer Assistance Center with
your email.
(snip)
Information received from customers such as yourself enables better
evaluation of dealers’ service and sales activities. Your complaint will
be retained in the dealers file.
Also, their conduct has been documented in our system.
Your dissatisfaction is regrettable, but we hope you will understand our
position. We hope this experience will not cause customers to misjudge
our products.
Please accept my sincerest apologies for the problems you have had. I
hope we will have another chance, sometime soon, to restore your faith
in Chrysler Group LLC.
Thanks again for your email and I apologize for the inconvenience of
this situation.
Sincerely,
Harry
Customer Service Representative
Chrysler Customer Assistance Center
Now the complaint may have just been filed away, I don’t know and I really don’t care but a little search found that there are a lot of other people that are unhappy with this particular dealership. They even had some complaint at the BBB so I would be very careful dealing with this group. Sorry that Barry has his name on such a place.
Once I got the email sent off for complaint I went back to work on the washing and had no more success at getting the “grease” stains rubbed out. It will need a stronger hand or cleaner than I had. It is cleaner and the big bugs are gone but the damn grease spots are now pretty bad.
Oh and after work my DIL went by with the same “winner” mailer and they had taken down the high pressure tables, (they had set up 4 or 5 extra sales tables and had brought in extra sales staff to run the pressure tactics) and were more than happy to just try her key without making her fill out a bunch of information on a sales sheet? Wonder if word got around about the complaints? Strange how it all changed? oh well, it was interesting to play the hoax out for awhile, but being shown the door required a complaint. They need to quit mailing out that crap try to be honest but how many car dealers, especially used car dealers do you trust? Nuff said – WD0AJG