Dealer Damaged My Car While In For Service

[13FastBlkSS]

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long read! If this is in the wrong section, I apologize.

Back on Friday May 9th I took my Camaro into my dealer for an issue I was having with my shifter / clutch making an odd vibration, and to have routine service (oil change, etc).

I call the dealer (George Chevrolet, Bellflower, CA) in the late afternoon wanting to know what the status is of my car, upon speaking to my service consultant, he informs me "the vibration is normal for a standard transmission (BS), oil change was done and there was an accident with your Camaro." Not the words you want to ever hear come out of your dealers mouth. I inquire with him and ask what do you mean accident? and he stated while trying to get my vehicle on the lift rack, my lower valance (ZL1 splitter) hit the rack and was damaged. My service tech then says, "if you want we can try and fix it or you can come down and look at it."

I get down to the dealer and find my service tech and tell him to show me my car, he takes me out to my car and what do I see....







At this time I am beyond pissed, but I knew me yelling at them would do nothing. I am later joined by the service manager, who tells me they would be more than happy to replace the part. But seeing as that the part was from RPI designs (who had a fire at their warehouse, and lost everything), I told him that the company who makes it no longer was able to make a new one due to their unfortunate accident.

The service manager offers to repair the part in house since its made of fiberglass. I agree, and ask the service manager how long it would take for them to repair the part. He tells me, "It should take a couple of days (answer coming from his body shop guy)." He then asks me if I want them to take off the part and repair it (so I can still have my car) or leave my car there and they will call me when they are done and provide me with a rental car (on them). I immediately tell them they can take off the part (no way I was going to let them keep my car, and possibly damage it more).

So fast forward to Monday the 12th, I am driving to work and notice my old service sticker is still in the corner of my windshield. I check the DIC for the oil life percentage and see its still at 62%! I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they did change it but forgot to replace the service sticker and reset the oil life in the DIC.

Fast forward to Monday the 19th (a week from the accident), I go to the dealer and they show me my repaired splitter (looks good). I go back to my service tech and tell him that I noticed they did not change my oil when I asked them to on the 9th. I told him I did not care if it was changed it or not, I want you to change it again. He tells me it will take approximately 3 - 4 hours for them to complete everything. Not a problem. I took them up on the rental car offer and later that afternoon, I got a call from the service tech saying my car was ready. Once I got down there, I went over my car with a fine tooth comb, looking for any possible damage but was relieved to find none!

After all is said and done, I will definitely will not be taking my Camaro back to George Chevrolet!

Some of you may wonder why I waited so long before posting about this, well I wanted to give the dealer the opportunity to fix their mistake before publicly blasting them.

If you made it to the end of my novel, I feel I should tell my fellow C5'ers if you ever take your Camaro into the dealer for whatever reason and those of you who have splitters, be sure to point out that you have the splitter on your car! I do not want this to happen to anyone else.

*Getting off my soap box*

More pics of the damage here: http://s1306.photobucket.com/user/bs...Chevy%20Damage

[Mint]

I'm sure it was very frustrating to have to deal with all that but at least they fixed their mistakes and didn't try to leave them for you.

[Z28bryan]

Sounds to me like they did fix their mistake.....


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[rebelyell22]

Simple accident that they owned up to... Could've happened at any dealer.

[maddoggyusa]

yea, if you worked on hundreds of cars... things happen. they took care of it. if anything, shows me they stand by their work.

[zim2323]

I'd love for a dealer to be this attentive to their incident. Better this then trying to tell me it was like that before it got there. And believe me, they do that with similar damage around here.

[F-16 Camaro]

The only thing I would fault them on is not calling you immediately when the damaged happened. They waited on you to call which is lame in my opinion.

[gajagfan]

These things happen. It sucks when they happen to you, but they do happen. I think the dealer handled it the way they should have. I would have no problems dealing with them in the future.

[GoldCartridgeGamer]

I'd still go back since they did fix the problem and even changed your oil again.

[RobertRS]

Meanwhile , they never acknowledged nor rectified the reason you brought it in to begin with. IMO the entire ordeal was a complete waste of time and grief.

[Camarolover85]

I understand your frustration and man that SUCKS! But, honestly they fixed it and that's a lot more than most places would do. Here's a good example, I was in Vegas this weekend and put in $20 and won $200 and was super happy. The machine didn't print my ticket and so I called an attendant. I was told that "It's not our problem, the system say's it was printed at 5PM." So obviously I flipped out on them and said "No, I never received it"

They stood by it and refused to check camera's showing I didn't walk away. Refused to cancel the ticket so it couldn't be cashed. They even told me it hadn't been cashed, only printed. I was not only out my $20, but the $180 i had won. Feel grateful you didn't have to pay for it yourself.

[gajagfan]

I am curious regarding the vibration sound with the clutch. I get that when I shift at higher RPM's. Never gave it much thought, but would be curious.

[LuSe4]

They told you about it, they fixed it, and they rechanged the oil, and gave you a rental. What the hell else did you want them to do, give you a new ZL1 for a damaged splitter?

Accidents happen.
I would take my car there simply because they took care of everything.

[colemanvoice]

I suggest anyone dropping off their car to take a Vehicle Inspection Report with them.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/77683812...rk-Order-Forms

Use it on the way in and on the way out. No one can tell you, "this didn't happen here" with that.

Glad that in this situation they took care of you, but that doesn't always happen.