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Dodgy Customer Service
We took our truck to Tempe Dodge in for its (nearly) 90,000-mile tune-up on Tuesday. Six hours and $700 later, we got into our truck to leave and it wouldn't start. Now, up until that point, we were in fair spirits. I mean, sure, we were told it would take only two hours and it ended up being six, but they found some things wrong with the truck that needed attention, so we were understanding about that. And sure, we were going to be shelling out a big chunk of change, but our truck is the most important thing we own, so we know we have to take care of it, so even though it stung, we accepted that too. And we, being the easy-going folks we are, didn't even get too upset when, after paying all that money, our truck wouldn't start. Things happen, and at least we were still at the dealership so they could fix whatever the problem was, right? So our Service Advisor, who had been great the whole day, came out to see why we were still hanging around, and when he found out the truck wouldn't start, he went off right away to bring out the technician who had been working on it for the past six hours. Here's where we started to have the problem (and know we know why they have Service Advisors as go-betweens).
First, our poor Service Advisor practically had to drag the guy over to us. Second, without even saying something like, "Gee, let me see what this could be," the tech turned the key (without first letting the light that tells us when it's ok to start our diesel engine go off, by the way), and hearing it just go click, says "It's your batteries." Ok, fine, but why were the lights turning on and all the little start-up sounds going off? And ok, say it's the battery...what did you do to them in the past six hours? I didn't say this out loud, of course, because I was a little turned off by the attitude. It was actually our Service Advisor who popped the hood and made the tech look around, which the tech did, and fiddled with a few hoses and such, and said again, "It's probably your batteries. Dodge always puts old batteries in when they sell a car, unless it's like a Viper, or something." A startling enough statement on its own, if you ask me, coming from a Dodge Technician in front of customers who not only paid $50,000 for the truck, but who had just also paid $700 in service charges to have him work on the truck, but he followed it up with the old customer service favorite, "There's nothing we can do about that." Then Phil and I couldn't keep our mouths shut anymore. Phil told him we had NEVER had any problems with the batteries, never had any problems with starting the truck, ever. And I chimed in that wasn't it quite the coincidence that today would be the day we had our first problem? He said, and I quote, "It's not our problem." The poor Service Advisor, at this time, was turning purple and I know he tried to kick the tech in the shins without us seeing. Phil was at a loss, having just been through a customer service training thing that told us never to do EVERYTHING this tech just did. And all I could come up with was, "Dude, we just paid $700 to have this thing serviced."
And I gave him a look. I'm not sure what kind of look, but a look, at which point he fiddled a bit more with some connections and then went to turn the ignition and viola! it started right up. Phil and I were very glad to get away from there, but our confidence in what the real problem was is shaky. I'm thinking it was a loose connection, which, if he would have just looked under the hood in the first place, he could have fixed without telling us our batteries were pieces of crap and the subsequent bad customer service clichés. Just keep your fingers crossed for us that when we go to start up our truck again, it actually works.
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