WARRANTY GAMES

I think maybe I should just stop looking at peoples reviews that they put up on the Internet concerning how they feel about the vehicle that they had purchased new. No one really seems to understand what’s really going on and I really don’t fucking know how it can be just ignored as a possible senario and everyone just points the finger to the manufacturer. 

Here’s the game

Lets take Mercedes-Benz as the company to talk about since thats where my most in dept training at a dealership level lies. 

You purchase your new Mercedes and get the factory bumper to bumper warranty of 4 years / 50,000 miles. You get it serviced regularly at the dealership that you bought it from. Nothing ever seems to be wrong and then the second it’s out of that warranty your slapped upside the head with a five to ten thousand dollar bill and say “They design these cars to just fall apart the second it’s out of warranty, what bullshit, those fucking thieves.” If that was possible and mechanics could put a pinpointed failure on a component I’d be a billionaire. 

The truth really is that under the vehicle there are these big plastic panels covering the bottom-side of the engine and transmission called encapsulation panels. There put in place for “added protection”. A  1/4 inch piece of plastic really isn’t going to do much protecting in my opinion. Well, The panels are actually put in place to catch any oil that may leak so when you bring the vehicle into service and the panels all come off the and the technician sees an oil leak and calls over the shop foreman / manager to add a line to the repair order to fix the failed gasket or component the person in charge declines authorization. Yup, 100% true. Believe it or not, even if there’s oil pouring onto the exhaust manifolds and could cause a fire there all told by their superiors “If the customer isn’t complaining about it then clean it all off and ship it.” 

So, if the vehicle was regularly serviced and your intervals are 10,000 miles between requested maintenance then we can safely say if it was leaking before that and that dealer is the only place you’ll bring the vehicle to,  then the previous technician did the same thing. As long as they remember to top off the oil level you’ll never even know that there was a leak. Now, it took roughly 10,000 miles to get it back to the point that it’s at now. And your next service you’re vehicle will be out of warranty and what would have been a warranty repair will be brought to your attention and aggressively sold to you by the Service Advisor. And he’ll mention all the safety issues and harm it could possibly do to other components. This get you to do one of two things. Pay the money to fix the vehicle or just trade it in for a penny [since it can’t be worth shit if it’s got all these problems now] and get into another vehicle where the whole game starts over.

Dealers across the country do this with all types of repairs not just the one spoken about above. I’ve been forced to let worn ball-joints, leaking transmissions, failing engine pulley’s, etc, all go so they could save their numbers. It’s completely disheartening to a mechanic that wants to better things and fix cars.

This is the dealership way all the way across the board. It’s done to keep warranty repair numbers down and customer pay number up. Dealers with the lowest warranty repairs are usually rewarded with some sort of bonus [at least the managers are]. So next time you see that big estimate at the end of your car’s warranty period. Know, that you just got fucked and it’s not just a coincidence because the car has been falling apart the entire time little by little, they just neglected to bring it to your attention to make themselves a little extra. 

Still not convinced? Next time you go to get your vehicle service at your lovely dealership and you know you have a leak and are positive it’s going to be covered under your factory warranty, don’t bring it to their attention and see if it’s handeled

# Federico Cinelli

# 09/09/11

# questions / comments

# This is in no way directed to the company’s and / or persons spoken about.

A series of truths written about the Automotive idunstry and what really goes on behind the scenes at the dealerships and independent shops. Written by a Mechanic, no second hand bullshit.