Thursday, February 28, 2008

Fusion Reactor Corrosion

Here is the update on my car.

I took it in for the corrosion on the battery issue last Friday. I received a call about 4:00pm that they would have to order a part and it would not be in until Monday. It turns out it wasn't just "naturally occurring" corrosion on my battery. There was a relay switch on the alarm/door locks that was causing a constant drain to the battery. They didn't have the part in stock, but it would be there Monday and they could get my car done.

Okay fine, at least this time they actually LOOKED at my car. I explained to the "professional" that I felt they needed to replace that part, the battery, and also put a new cable clamp on. The one that is currently on there is still covered in corrosion that has gotten down on the cable. They needed to clean the cable up and then steam clean the engine are and not leave corrosion particles all over my engine like last week.

I waited all day Monday for a call to come pick up my car. Finally at 4:30pm I called to see what was going on. My "professional" service advisor gets on the phone and says "Oh it isn't going to be ready today. Everything is done but we wont have a chance to test it until tomorrow." WHAT??? Why can't they test it as soon as they are done putting everything in? I mean they don't close for another 1 1/2 hours so that should be plenty of time to finish my car I would think. Too much to ask I guess.

Tuesday comes and I wait to hear from the dealership. I guess I am just impatient or something because about 1:00 I decide to call. My "service advisor" is at lunch and they could have him call me back. I ask the lady if she could just look and see if my car is done. She tells me "You need to speak with your service advisor." I tell her no, I need her to see if my car is done. It isn't like I am asking her to go out and fix it herself, or hand wax it. I just want to know if it is done. She puts me on hold, comes back and tells me that yes it has been done since last night.

(insert sound of hand hitting forehead)

I load up the family (we had some shopping to do) and head out. The invoice I get says that they replaced the battery, and the relay switch. It is all covered under warranty so I pack everyone up and we go to the store.

I know I should have checked everything at the dealership before we left, but I just wanted out of there. Have I mentioned I really hate dealership mechanics? So, we get home and I decide to check what they did. I open the hood and....well let's just say I was not surprised at all.

The first thing I noticed was the large amount of corrosion all over the clamp. It did appear that they replaced the battery. Oh yeah, they did steam clean the engine only they didn't bother to make sure it was all clean. There was water pooled up in every possible place and it looked like they used water right out of a sand pool. There was dirt all over the place.

So, I grabbed my handy battery cleaning brush and went to work on the clamp. It took me all of 10 minutes to have the clamp completely clean of any corrosion. If they had actually taken any amount of time to do their so called "professional" job, this would have been done. A customer brings you a car that wont start due to corrosion on the battery, you would think you would make sure there was no corrosion left to be a problem. Well, there isn't any now! Oh yeah, I also sprayed the terminal and clamp with the anti-corrosion spray which they said they did, but actually didn't.

I was so upset by their lack of quality in their work that Jayna picked up the phone and spoke with the service manager. Of course he was all "I am so sorry" and "we want you to be happy." You know what that translates into? Yeah, me bringing my car back in for him to "inspect" it.

After all this do you really think I want to bring my car back to you?

I am going to have to call him today and let him know I am not happy about the quality of their service tech. There are other Ford dealerships here where I can have warranty work done and in the future I will go to one of them.

I will post what he says after I call him.

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