AZHitman, I need your help! Nissan is trying to screw me!

[G_whizz]

Great idea!! I think a stcky or something that names the best dealers to work with and/or the ones to stay away from is an excellent idea!!

The write up would REALLy help out other Members!!

*HIGH FIVE* Seyath ...congrats!!

[homeslicej2]

Congrats on getting things (mostly) worked out. It's good that you have an honest dealership to go to. GL with HQ.

[GrilledCheese33]

I just read the whole thread and i'm very happy to hear that you are getting it worked out.

[seyath]

Ok, new update. I have just received a phone call from Ramsey Nissan. My car is ready to be picked up .Apparently my battery is dying and my belts are going to need to be replaced within the next few thousand miles. I gently declined the offer for their service, because I have some unfinished business with O'Brien first.

I have called Nissan HQ Customer Service (1-800-647-7261).I was attended by Mandy Jubani (x51642), who was very kind and very concerned with my story. She took down notes of everything that has happened. I once again mentioned my Nico family and all the support you guys had given me. She proceeded to give me my file #(5827531), and a regional customer service specialist will contact me before the end of the next business day. She asked me what would I require of Nissan to feel compensated for the situation. So I proceeded to ask them to refund me the motor oil flush fee, for my car to be aligned free of charge, since they obviously did not, and something extra since I had to be without my car for two weeks now and I have had more headaches than I could wish for.So, I will have to talk to the regional representative in person to request these in person, and in they will have to contact the dealership and find out exactly what they were doing.

So, I will update this again when I get in touch with the regional specialist and I will let you guys know what the situation looks like. Thanks again for all your support.Greg, as soon as this is all taken care of you can count on a nice article on how to deal with shady dealerships and how to protect yourself. Do I smell a free sweatshirt...? lol

[Dattebayo]

Last time I called HQ for a complaint they gave me a free baseball cap and a shirt.

I think its a little funny that the "good" dealer was telling you about your battery and belts I have seen the most incredibly shot batteries come back to life with just an overnight charging from the line battery charger. The belts, meh... I don't know.

[SketchyRollin564]

Quote »Nissan is trying to screw me![/quote]BOW CHIKA WOW WOWWWWWWWW

[AZhitman]

Beautifully done.

Now, print a copy of this thread and mail it to the GM of that dealership so he can see what a MESS his retarded tech caused.

[9095240SXDUCK]

at my dealer (nissan)we can't align anything bigger 20s! it max out at 20s!

Damn that is the biggest BS I have hear. BUt it happens, these are the techs that make other good techs look bad!

I hope the service writer pay has to do with CSI too! Because some are base of CSI point the higher the more pay!

[datsun2401972]

uh, grammar?!

[9095240SXDUCK]

talk to me about grammar when you can speak 3 different languages! LOL

And I was half a sleep when I type that, just like now!

[Oatmealman]

sounds like everything's going good,and kenrik not everyone has the time to get on the ground or put their car on the lift and change their oil,sometimes it's inevitable.

[mattscar]

This is BY FAR the best pwned video when it comes to stealerships trying to screw customers!!

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/0...6-500/

[mattscar]

This also damn funny!

[NISTECH]

I know I dont come round these parts much more or post for that matter, however this one got my attention.

I read your first post and knew what was wrong with your car. We have done 3 maxi's thus far for the same problem except we also replaced the chains and vtc due to the valve clatter you heard. The vtc's are likely beat to hell from the chain whipping around like it was and the chains have likely suffered premature wear. These are silent type chains which make them extra sensitive to impacts. All 3 were done under warranty and all 3 were 04's.

Nissan has 2 service schedules. one recommends you change your oil every 3750 miles and the other recommends you change your oil every 7500 miles. Nissan only holds you liable to the 7500 mile interval.

Alignments. Some dealers dont even have alignments machine so they are not required to have any special equipment to adapt to abnormal or larger factory wheel sizes. It is not uncommon for dealers to sublet alignments to tire shops ,even for warranty. We were unable to do tires on titans/armada that had no lip tire beads as we coudnt get the fingers on the laser heads inbetween without risking damage to the wheels. I mentioned this to our fixed operatins director and we quickly bought a $1200 set of clamps to grab the outsides of the tires to do the alignments. We currently have the top of the line hunter alignmnet machine. Even that will have its limits but if you purchase additional accessories you can adapt.

Your experiance: Sadly this is everywhere. Some dealers have a full shop of good techs who are honest and trustworthy. some shops are full of theifs. Most shops have a mixed breed. In one part of the shop you'll have the guys that are honest and trustworthy and the other side you'll have the thiefs. Unfortunitly what they are doing is unseen by the honest guys since they dont tend to concern themselfs with what others are doing as to them its really none of thier buisness. More unfortunite is the advisors and managers dont have a clue on car related problems and put thier trust in thier technicians judgment. Some management will deal with it harshly if it is found out and others will evaluate how much that tech is making the dealer before dealing with it. If their intake is huge they may turn a blind eye and let it go. But guess what guys. This isnt just the dealer this is full range. It goes all the way down to mom and pop shops all the way up to huge chain dealers. I am pretty sure our dealer has filter out most of the scum however in its place inexperiance in automotive trade has moved in. So basically the guys that new what they were doing but ripping people off are gone, now guys who try thier hardest to do the job right but make stupid mistakes [sometimes saftey related] are fillin in.

lastly a lesson on NNA to Dealer connection. Dealers are only associates of NNA and are not part of the NNA corperation. They have an agreement with nissan to sell their cars and service them. NNA's policies in warranty put the dealer on egde. The dealer has to watch every ro claim and make sure they stay below an average for their area. Its done on a point system. The more claims you have of a certian type the more points you get. There is a threshold If you hit it your dealer risks being audited by nissan. When an auditor comes in he has no intention of leaving until he has charged back the dealer 15k. Now audits have reached 6 figures for some dealers. This could be simply because of a documentation error by the tech or advisor. It is something dealers like to avoid at all costs. Here is another policy. Each dealer has certian limits and these limits will very per dealer depending on the dealers points for the prior month. There is a thing called straight time techs are suppose to use for diagnosing problems under warranty. Now this straight time is suppose to be used freely for any diagnosis that takes place. however most dealers wont pay it to thier techs unless it is a squeek and rattle problem they are chasing as that is easier to claim with nissan. But if the cars windows wont go up and the tech spend 45 mins pin checking wiring trying to find the failure which he traces to a power window switch. The tech gets payed .2 hrs to fix it and that is it. That is 12 mins for a window switch r&r. He does not get payed his diag time. Another limit is amount of money that can be spent on any one car. Again that can vary do to the point system. Let me tell you it can be a major consumption of time trying to get it approved. The dealer has to contact nissan warranty administration to get this approval and guess what guys. Their pay plan has perks for keeping approval amounts low.

So the engine you may have needed according to O'briens could have put them over their limit, leading to them trying to shift it from warranty to customer pay by asking for your reciepts. Now dont get me wrong but I feel they over stepped their bounds with you. Everything they did was unjust and flat out wrong.

I have been with nissan over 12yrs now as a tech. I am the highest level master tech nissan offers. I have watched the labor pay per ro drop drastically over that time. I have watched a plenty of really sharp nissan techs who had put in many years of service working on nissans bow out from the buisness. They either completly stepped away from the wrenching end of the buisness or switched to another car line. The main reason is nissan has 1) made these cars nearly maintainence free which is were a large part of tech hours came from. 2) reduced the amount of time a warranty job pays. Which also lowers the techs paycheck. The slower techs who know what they are doing and the less experianced techs have 2 choices either take drastic short cuts or make stuff up to earn a living.[ i.e. sell an oil flush to make an hours pay before you address the real problem.] or get out of the buisness and seek a new career. Which has been happing. We will get a guy in , fresh, new to the buisness, he will last a matter of months then decide this isnt for him and he moves on in life. That leads to a vicious cycle of tech turn around getting in techs of all types who come and go.

I don't expect any of you to like whats just been put in front of you, I don't expect nissan to appriciate me for pointing out their way of buisness. But it is what it is.

BTW I too have considered jumping ship, many times. Not because I dont like what I do for a living, actually I love fixin cars, the challenges are great. What I dont like about the buisness is the politics of it. mostly what I have stated above, oh and the unreasonable customer now and then.

If you made it this far I applaud you.
Modified by NISTECH at 11:14 PM 8/25/2007

[audtatious]

Scotty!

Thanks for the insight. Great seeing you post

[NISTECH]

sorry for the speeling and grammer erros. I am hella tired and typed that trying to keep up with my thought process. No there was no rough draft.

[AZhitman]

Scott, BRILLIANT post!

Good to see you're still around. We miss you.

[audtatious]

Nobody is going to give you crap for spelling errors

Hope things are going well for ya and hope to see you drop in from time to time just to say hi.

[NISTECH]

Yea I peek in every now and then but dont typically have a lot of time to go through masses of posts. I came by a week or so ago and layed some down in NOM. But things have been busy for me. New schedule at work has me working longer hours but less days. Lots of crap to do around my place. Playing with the verts and the camaro have pretty much been put as low priority in my list of things to do in life..lol

[audtatious]

Understandable for sure. Trying to get things done around here and deal with work and family life has gotten tougher this year. At the moment I'm working to get a portal refresh done before I fly out tomorrow for a week of training.

If it's not one thing it's another, so Rosanne Rosanna Danna used to say.

[boznuttz]

Eh, my friends have had several good experiences in Ramsey and Nyack Nissan places....but then again, you're choosing between the lesser of evils.

[datsun2401972]

Here is another policy. Each dealer has certian limits and these limits will very per dealer depending on the dealers points for the prior month. There is a thing called straight time techs are suppose to use for diagnosing problems under warranty. Now this straight time is suppose to be used freely for any diagnosis that takes place. however most dealers wont pay it to thier techs unless it is a squeek and rattle problem they are chasing as that is easier to claim with nissan. But if the cars windows wont go up and the tech spend 45 mins pin checking wiring trying to find the failure which he traces to a power window switch. The tech gets payed .2 hrs to fix it and that is it. That is 12 mins for a window switch r&r. He does not get payed his diag time.

I heard a rumor once that most dealerships will pay a mechanic for 16 hours on a 16 hour job even if they get it done in less time.

Is that true?! Thanks

[NISTECH]

I heard a rumor once that most dealerships will pay a mechanic for 16 hours on a 16 hour job even if they get it done in less time.

Is that true?! Thanks

This is 100% correct. Its called "flat rate" There is a book or online source that has labor times for almost every job on a car. This book is the general rule for all amotive repair shops. this book is also used by insurance estimators and automotive repair regulatory government. When you go to a dealer and ask to have say your brakes done. The typical flat rate time is 2 hours per axle. this includes machining rotors and check bearing runout as well as the pad replaement and caliper pin lubrication. Some techs can get the job done as fast as 45 mins and some tech can take more then 2 hrs. It depends on the technician skill level on how fast he can get it done. So the way it works every tech in the shop gets 2 hrs for the brake job. By law it has to be that way. The law also states we cant charge one customer 1 hr for the brake job and then another customer 2 hrs for the same job. This applies to all automotive service facilities not just dealers.

[datsun2401972]

...time to see if my local Porsche dealership is hiring lol...

[9095240SXDUCK]

I know I dont come round these parts much more or post for that matter, however this one got my attention.

I read your first post and knew what was wrong with your car. We have done 3 maxi's thus far for the same problem except we also replaced the chains and vtc due to the valve clatter you heard. The vtc's are likely beat to hell from the chain whipping around like it was and the chains have likely suffered premature wear. These are silent type chains which make them extra sensitive to impacts. All 3 were done under warranty and all 3 were 04's.

Nissan has 2 service schedules. one recommends you change your oil every 3750 miles and the other recommends you change your oil every 7500 miles. Nissan only holds you liable to the 7500 mile interval.

Alignments. Some dealers dont even have alignments machine so they are not required to have any special equipment to adapt to abnormal or larger factory wheel sizes. It is not uncommon for dealers to sublet alignments to tire shops ,even for warranty. We were unable to do tires on titans/armada that had no lip tire beads as we coudnt get the fingers on the laser heads inbetween without risking damage to the wheels. I mentioned this to our fixed operatins director and we quickly bought a $1200 set of clamps to grab the outsides of the tires to do the alignments. We currently have the top of the line hunter alignmnet machine. Even that will have its limits but if you purchase additional accessories you can adapt.

Your experiance: Sadly this is everywhere. Some dealers have a full shop of good techs who are honest and trustworthy. some shops are full of theifs. Most shops have a mixed breed. In one part of the shop you'll have the guys that are honest and trustworthy and the other side you'll have the thiefs. Unfortunitly what they are doing is unseen by the honest guys since they dont tend to concern themselfs with what others are doing as to them its really none of thier buisness. More unfortunite is the advisors and managers dont have a clue on car related problems and put thier trust in thier technicians judgment. Some management will deal with it harshly if it is found out and others will evaluate how much that tech is making the dealer before dealing with it. If their intake is huge they may turn a blind eye and let it go. But guess what guys. This isnt just the dealer this is full range. It goes all the way down to mom and pop shops all the way up to huge chain dealers. I am pretty sure our dealer has filter out most of the scum however in its place inexperiance in automotive trade has moved in. So basically the guys that new what they were doing but ripping people off are gone, now guys who try thier hardest to do the job right but make stupid mistakes [sometimes saftey related] are fillin in.

lastly a lesson on NNA to Dealer connection. Dealers are only associates of NNA and are not part of the NNA corperation. They have an agreement with nissan to sell their cars and service them. NNA's policies in warranty put the dealer on egde. The dealer has to watch every ro claim and make sure they stay below an average for their area. Its done on a point system. The more claims you have of a certian type the more points you get. There is a threshold If you hit it your dealer risks being audited by nissan. When an auditor comes in he has no intention of leaving until he has charged back the dealer 15k. Now audits have reached 6 figures for some dealers. This could be simply because of a documentation error by the tech or advisor. It is something dealers like to avoid at all costs. Here is another policy. Each dealer has certian limits and these limits will very per dealer depending on the dealers points for the prior month. There is a thing called straight time techs are suppose to use for diagnosing problems under warranty. Now this straight time is suppose to be used freely for any diagnosis that takes place. however most dealers wont pay it to thier techs unless it is a squeek and rattle problem they are chasing as that is easier to claim with nissan. But if the cars windows wont go up and the tech spend 45 mins pin checking wiring trying to find the failure which he traces to a power window switch. The tech gets payed .2 hrs to fix it and that is it. That is 12 mins for a window switch r&r. He does not get payed his diag time. Another limit is amount of money that can be spent on any one car. Again that can vary do to the point system. Let me tell you it can be a major consumption of time trying to get it approved. The dealer has to contact nissan warranty administration to get this approval and guess what guys. Their pay plan has perks for keeping approval amounts low.

So the engine you may have needed according to O'briens could have put them over their limit, leading to them trying to shift it from warranty to customer pay by asking for your reciepts. Now dont get me wrong but I feel they over stepped their bounds with you. Everything they did was unjust and flat out wrong.

I have been with nissan over 12yrs now as a tech. I am the highest level master tech nissan offers. I have watched the labor pay per ro drop drastically over that time. I have watched a plenty of really sharp nissan techs who had put in many years of service working on nissans bow out from the buisness. They either completly stepped away from the wrenching end of the buisness or switched to another car line. The main reason is nissan has 1) made these cars nearly maintainence free which is were a large part of tech hours came from. 2) reduced the amount of time a warranty job pays. Which also lowers the techs paycheck. The slower techs who know what they are doing and the less experianced techs have 2 choices either take drastic short cuts or make stuff up to earn a living.[ i.e. sell an oil flush to make an hours pay before you address the real problem.] or get out of the buisness and seek a new career. Which has been happing. We will get a guy in , fresh, new to the buisness, he will last a matter of months then decide this isnt for him and he moves on in life. That leads to a vicious cycle of tech turn around getting in techs of all types who come and go.

I don't expect any of you to like whats just been put in front of you, I don't expect nissan to appriciate me for pointing out their way of buisness. But it is what it is.

BTW I too have considered jumping ship, many times. Not because I dont like what I do for a living, actually I love fixin cars, the challenges are great. What I dont like about the buisness is the politics of it. mostly what I have stated above, oh and the unreasonable customer now and then.

If you made it this far I applaud you.

Modified by NISTECH at 11:14 PM 8/25/2007

damn i can't say it better my self!

[datsun2401972]

Being fluent in 3 languages and trying to be are two completely different things lol...

I'd say ya got 2 out of 3, but that's because I haven't seen you try to type in the other two languages yet...

I could have learned French and Russian fluently if I had so desired. And even if I had, I wouldn't brag about it.

But anyways, do my uncreative *** a favor and try to convey your message alittle more precisely. Thanks.

[fueler]

I hate Stealerships. At least in San Diego, you'd be hard pressed to find a good one, for any of the car companies.

Hey, a San Diegan! I had good experience at the Nissan dealer in National ****ty, mile of cars. PS What's wrong with keeping 4 years of receipts? I have a binder full, every oil change, EVERYTHING. Over $2k in maintenance. I even have th original window sticker from the dealership when it was new. It will be well worth the effort when it comes to selling the car.

[Uberck]

oh chit mang mah oil presha is up betta run to da dealer

[AZhitman]

But anyways, do my uncreative *** a favor and try to convey your message alittle more precisely. Thanks.

Ummm, I'm not liking this.

Duck's 3rd language is English and he does a pretty damn good job of it. While it's fine to poke fun (we all pick on his "Engrish" a little bit), it's not OK to be rude about it.

[fueler]

I could have learned French and Russian fluently if I had so desired. And even if I had, I wouldn't brag about it.

Yeah right, you ignoranus hahahah. DO IT first, otherwise you're just an ignorant dumbass who thinks he could have learned other languages.... but simply didn't cause you didn't want to??

I can't stand people who say sh** like this, like they know something after watching the travel channel.