Rt 23 Auto Mall

[JCU]

For those of you in the vicinity of Northern New Jersey, please listen to my tale about the RT 23 Auto Mall in Butler, NJ.

On Thanksgiving Night of 2000, my tranny failed. Being that I was far from home, I decided to have it towed to the nearest Ford dealership. This dealership quoted me $2400 which was $1700 for the tranny and $700 for labor. The vehicle was promised to be completed by the following saturday. When talking to them on the phone, they said it would be waiting for me to pick it up. Saturday came and saturday went and no SHO. Their excuse was a cracked tc. It would be ordered and would be finished on Wednesday. Again, they were called and said it would be done. When I arrived, they said a sensor that came in the crate was broken. By this time my patience was gone. I told them if it wasn't done by saturday (3 days) I would call my dredit card company and cancel the charges made on it and that I would sue the pants off them. Guess what? It was done on that saturday. It was done but the job was crappy at best. They reused a broken tranny mount and screwed up the linkage. On top of that, they couldn't decide on what the correct warranty was on the tranny.

When I had a friend of mine look at it, who is a certified mechanic, he said the job they did was the worst he has ever see and that it looked as if monkies from a zoo did the job! A few months down the road I started developing problems and called them. This time, they told me the warranty was a different term that what they originally said. For the **** of it, I called Ford a few months ago and they said this dealership was wrong in what they said about the warranty. Furthermore, my tranny was still under warranty when I inquired about it to them. In otherwords, it should have been fixed under warranty but do to their incompetance, it wasn't.

Some of you may have had work done there and it might have been good. In my case I spent $2400 and received total crap from them. Please, avoid this dealership at all costs. Five pre-schoolers and a ferret could do better work. It seems to me as if their heads are up their arses when it comes to quality and service. Do not end up making a costly mistake.

Remember the name: Rt 23 Auto mall in Butler, New Jersey

 

[Mr Anonymous]

There's never a good excuse for crappy workmanship.

But -- not necessarily in this particular dealers defense -- the other parts of your experience are not that unusual, and should be expected to some extent by auto service consumers.

There are a number of perfectly legitimate and reasonable explanations why services aren't always done on the schedule the dealer/mechanic says they will be done. Whether its backordered, misordered/misfilled, or damaged parts; an overwhelmed/overscheduled or short-handed service staff; or just a particularly difficult car to work on (like the ones we in the northeast see all the time with rusted and broken bolts); some times delays happen despite the dealer or mechanic's best intentions and efforts. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be up-front and inform the customer asap when it's clear that there's going to be a delay. For major work like a tranny, crash repairs, engine swaps, etc. I would never recommend anyone bank on the completion date being cast in stone. If you are promised the work will be done late Friday, don't plan a 2000 mile road trip for first thing Saturday morning -- you're likely to be disappointed!

Warranties can be another problematic issue, as you have experienced. This is one place where it really takes a well-informed consumer to make sure they are getting the full benefits of any factory or extended warranty they are entitled to. While the modern technology in systems like Ford's OASIS are usually pretty good at determining correct warranty status instantly, there are certainly times when it fails (more so with extended warranties).

Obviously, you were in the worse-case scenario, being far from home and at the mercy of a unknown dealer that you had no relationship with. Hopefully others will learn from your experience and be able to avoid those pitfalls.

In this type of situation, it helps to be as proactive and informed as possible in protecting your interests. When there's any issues concerning the quality of work, warranty status, and other critical concerns, it's always best to move up the ladder to dealer management, starting with the service manager, and up to the dealer GM if necessary. It sounds like to did that to a point in finally getting them to finish the work, but with a little extra effort (or bringing it to Fomoco's attention right after you first got home) you might have saved yourself $2400.

In any case, this was a good opportunity for others to learn how to be a smarter consumer when dealing with dealers (or anyone performing service on ANY car). Read those warranties, and be assertive when dealing with anyone who works on your car! Sadly, most car dealers, auto service chains, and independent mechanics rely on naive or uniformed consumers for the bulk of their profits.

Sorry to ramble on... I just hate to see people get screwed when they entrust their cars to someone else for service!

<small>[ August 12, 2003, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: SHOooo ]</small>