Reached the end of my rope dealing with gm dealers

[joe h]

Basically have two hack service departments in the Bismarck area. Back in august I took the camaro to the Bismarck shop, and ended up with a nice door ding that they never fessed up to. So a hundred phone calls to gm, the dealership, and a brief chat with a lawyer, it was determined I was 100% at fault.

Two months later my cobalt develops an ungodly exhaust vibration/rattle when warm. Since there is no way I'm making the same mistake twice, I take it to the Mandan dealer. They determine the cat is leaking and needs to be replaced. A week later the part comes in, I drop the car off, 5 hours later they finish. I pay the $750 and as I'm walking to my car, they are turning off the lights. Start the car up, and the car may as well not even have a muffler. After about 5 minute the noise goes away. So I'm thinking the new cat might need some break in time. However, once the car warms up, the ungodly vibration returns. So the thought is running through my head, I may have just spent $750 and didn't even fix the problem. And if the cat isn't what was causing the noise, was there ever anything wrong with it. Being it is Saturday, I won't be able to raise hell until Monday.

The biggest problem, the dealerships are simply franchises and gm has no control in how they handle their customers, until it is time to renew the agreement. And gm doesn't care if a few customers have their cars wrecked. Gm isn't responsible, and the dealership rarely has their hands slapped. About all you can do is fill out a survey. Which does nothing. Anyways, I have no idea what my next car will be, but my gm buying days are quickly coming to an end.

[SRT8Tech]

Its not just GM dealers, its all of them. Don't jump ship because of a dealer. I could care less if I had a Ford, Chevy or Dodge. Ive had all of them. Only reason I have more Mopar stuff is because I was a tech for Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep for near 18 years. I know nearly everybody at all those dealers around me so I know who is working on my car. Plus I get good deals on new cars.

If you goto a Ford or Dodge, you will still have crappy dealers, trust me. I don't even want to get into what happened when I got my first oil change done on the 2012 GT500 I had.

[LuSe4]

I totally agree with SRT8Tech. A large majority of dealerships have employees that don't care, and it isn't limited to domestic dealers either. My boss' s wife had a BMW 5 series and she went through a lot of problems with her dealer. It culminated with finally getting rid of it and buying a new CTS. She has not had any issues with the Caddy dealership.

[motorhead]

I have sung the praises of my GM dealer on here many times, but I think I have found their limitation. They don't seem to have any idea how to fix a diesel truck. I'm currently battling with two of my diesel service trucks that they keep charging me large sums of money to repair and they still aren't fixed. It's getting very frustrating. For the first time I'm tossing around the idea of going somewhere else.

The shouldn't allowed to sell a product that they don't know how to repair.

[Number 3]

What year is your Cobalt? You should have an emissions warranty that would cover a catalytic converter out to 7 years, if I'm not mistaken.

[joe h]

Originally Posted by Number 3

What year is your Cobalt? You should have an emissions warranty that would cover a catalytic converter out to 7 years, if I'm not mistaken.

2008 sport.

[kc ss/rs]

federal emission warranty on foreign or domestic vehicles is eight years or eighty thousand miles.

[Number 3]

Unless you have high mileage you should have been under your emissions warranty.

[ChrisBlair]

Originally Posted by joe h

Basically have two hack service departments in the Bismarck area. Back in august I took the camaro to the Bismarck shop, and ended up with a nice door ding that they never fessed up to. So a hundred phone calls to gm, the dealership, and a brief chat with a lawyer, it was determined I was 100% at fault.

Two months later my cobalt develops an ungodly exhaust vibration/rattle when warm. Since there is no way I'm making the same mistake twice, I take it to the Mandan dealer. They determine the cat is leaking and needs to be replaced. A week later the part comes in, I drop the car off, 5 hours later they finish. I pay the $750 and as I'm walking to my car, they are turning off the lights. Start the car up, and the car may as well not even have a muffler. After about 5 minute the noise goes away. So I'm thinking the new cat might need some break in time. However, once the car warms up, the ungodly vibration returns. So the thought is running through my head, I may have just spent $750 and didn't even fix the problem. And if the cat isn't what was causing the noise, was there ever anything wrong with it. Being it is Saturday, I won't be able to raise hell until Monday.

The biggest problem, the dealerships are simply franchises and gm has no control in how they handle their customers, until it is time to renew the agreement. And gm doesn't care if a few customers have their cars wrecked. Gm isn't responsible, and the dealership rarely has their hands slapped. About all you can do is fill out a survey. Which does nothing. Anyways, I have no idea what my next car will be, but my gm buying days are quickly coming to an end.

I hear ya Joe. I feel like photo-documenting every panel of my car while the service manager stands in front of it with today's newspaper every time I take my Camaro in. At my dealer, they are so inept that I had to instruct them on technical aspects of the vehicle- after they screwed up! Customers having to enlighten the dealer's service center...that's spells trouble. And we're talking capital T and that rhymes with P and that means "piss-poor". My local Caddy shop does my service now. They are nice, and they try, and the shop is neat and clean. But while I would not say they are 'inept'- they are competent- they defintely have a downside in several areas. For instance they seem to not be on board with being a GM service center. They think they are just a Cadillac service center.

But as others mentioned- it's not just GM. Unfortunately. Every place should be suspected of trying to rip you off and do a bad job in the meantime, until you can prove otherwise.

My Poncho dealer back in '08 was stellar- Ricky Smith in Weymouth MA. They gave a damn. GM told them "so sorry, you're no longer a GM dealer even though you sell Buick and GM too".

Right after that? Service was in the toilet. Oily handprints on my car? Really? Like, for-real, they tried to see if that could fly? I took a tech aside and asked what was up. He said "we got the letter from GM". And I said "shit". And then I made the service manager clean my f-g car. But that doesn't do any good. Once the shop is poor, it's not easy to turn that around.

[joe h]

104,000 so yeah, if I could do it over again, definitely would have installed an aftermarket myself, or taken it to an independent shop. Crawled under it this afternoon and didn't notice anything out of place. So I'll give them one last chance, then gut the system starting with the cheapest part.

[shine2013]

I had problems with the last Chevy I had. One dealer quoted me for one price and another quoted me for a higher price for the same thing.