Dealer rant, service loaner policy

[jedgington]

Pardon me while I rant about my dealer experience today:

In Iowa, we have exactly one Infiniti dealer, located 90 miles from my house. I set up an appointment 10 days ago to have the fuel fill service bulletin taken care of. (I originally thought this was just a problem with my car until I read the post regarding the service bulletin). I expected that they would do the work today. Instead, they found they didn't have the parts on hand and would need to order them. I would have thought they'd do this BEFORE I drove the 2 hours to get there!

I also find out that they now charge $10 to get a loaner vehicle (plus gas) while your car is in service. I thought the service loan car was complimentary, as long as your vehicle is still under the new car basic warranty. Has the policy changed?

Ok, done ranting (for now).

[maxnix]

Dealer loaner car policies, labor rates and part rates are at its own discretion. Likewise, not all TSB apply to all cars mentioned in the TSB unless that particular car exhibits certain conditions. Recalls are different. In particular, the dealer cannot authorize even a covered repair until it has inspected and diagnosed the car. In either case, the dealer may or may not stock the necessary repair parts, in which case you will have to wait until the parts are ordered.

Like it or not, that's the way it works.

[Mark Linkous]

Yikes. I have never heard of an Infiniti dealer charging for a loaner. That definitely seems to be a byproduct of having no competition. I would also reckon that do not assess this "fee" to folks who purchased their car at the dealer.

As for the TSB, I would be annoyed to if I had made an appointment for a specific issue and the associated parts were not available.ML

[SteveTheTech]

I would recommend when you make an appointment explain to them your plight, many times (if you have a good rapport with them) they can do their best to make accommodations to help you out, be it ordering the parts or ensuring you have a loaner available. My advise would be to talk to the service consultant the day before or early the day of your scheduled service appointment.

As for charging ten dollars for the loaner why? I do not understand why they were doing that, maybe like Mark was saying it's about the lack of competition and even at $10 it's cheaper than an Enterprise car. The gas is understandable, they willl let you barrow a car but if you want to drive it it's up to you to supply it, I don't think that's too much to ask on their part (G's usually get ~18-20mpg, not too bad). The dealers have to lease the loaners from the company and maybe the dealer is having a very hard time paying for their cars, I know they should not pass that onto the customers but as all things someone has to pay for it. I am not justifying their actions but I can understand why.

My dealer charges people who do not bring cars back in a certain period of time. We have people say they are too busy or unable to come back for two weeks to bring our car back after declining to have service performed on their car, basically just stealing our car for weeks, or taking them way out of state(we once had someone get caught by the owner of the company in Canada with a loaner that is not supposed to leave the Beltway area).

[jlindy]

Of course you have to pay for the gas you use on the loaner, but charging for the loaner itself is just silly. As far as not ordering the parts before hand, dealers will never do that because they have to make sure exactly what needs to be ordered before they do which means they will need to see the car. If there are other issues with it that need addressing, they want to do that all at once.

I dropped off my car for service last week and they told me that they ran out of loaners and would have to send me to enterprise. I knew with the holiday that meant keeping the crappy enterprise car the whole week/weekend. Luckily, someone had brought back a loaner for me to use just after they told me that. It was a sweet QX56 that had all the options.

[striz923]

My dealer in Louisville had a sign up saying as of June xx there will be $9.50 fee due to gas price increase. You do not have to pay for the gas, bring it back as is. When I pointed out that gas was half the price that it was when the policy went into effect, the lady said well we have to cover new tires, oil changes, etc. I almost pointed out that the sign said "due to higher fuel charges" and not "due to paying for maintenance and fuel", but then I remembered how everyone on here says "be nice to your servicer to get the benefit of the doubt" there is only one infiniti dealer in Louisville BTW...