Post by
DrftkingIII »
https://forums.nicoclub.com/drftkingiii-u159236.html
Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:47 am
Hey Guys,
Sorry for the late reply. So I took the car to one of the dealers here in town and dropped the car with them. They called me back later in the afternoon and told me that they diagnosed it as a heater core.
"A heater core? This car is 5 years old! How can a heater core fail already? Wouldn't that mean BOTH sides would be blowing cold, not just one side? If it was leaking slightly, I would smell a bit of coolant. To me, it sounds like a blend door is stuck open or something along those lines. Did you hook up to the HVAC computer and test the motors/servos on all the blend doors?" was about how I responded. All I got in return was "that's what my tech diagnosed it as, sorry, that's all I know."
This is about when my frustration began with the service advisor over there, more on that later. I said I'll forward this over to the dealer I bought the car from and we will go from there. After many phone calls, about a week of waiting, and a lot of attitude from multiple employees, I got a call back from the "Reconditioning Manager" who said that they would split the bill 50/50 with me, after admitting it was something they missed on the "Mechanical Inspection" I asked them to do on the car pre purchase (obviously I was told the car was good, oil was changed, brake pads were fine, etc etc.) Moving along, I submitted the estimate that the Infiniti Service Department had given me, which called for SIXTEEN HOURS and a $400 core. Obviously the dealer tried to tell me to bring the car back to them (3 hours each way) and have them replace it. I said no, that I wanted Infiniti to do it, and my schedule wouldn't permit dropping a car off 3 hours away and not having it for an indefinite amount of time. Anyways, a couple of days later, they e-mailed me back saying that "they had checked around and 'industry standard' replacement time for the part was 6.7 hours, and that they were willing to split the part and the 6.7 hours, nothing more" essentially leaving me with an extra 13 HOURS to pay for.
So I went back to the service advisor at Infiniti I had been working with and asked why they had two different sources tell them it was a 6.7 job, yet he is quoting me 16 hours. IT TOOK HIM FOUR DAYS to email me back, and all he said was "LET ME LOOK UP TIME AND SEE WHAT IT REQUIRES…THE TECHNICIAN GAVE ME THE TIME FOR REPAIR." Seriously? That's the best you can answer? Why are you even here? Why don't I just talk to the tech, because you clearly don't have much knowledge on the situation for a "Service Advisor." *I didn't say this to him, as much as I wanted to.*
So I waited. FIVE whole days go by, no response. I called the dealer, no answer. Left a voicemail. No return call the next day. Another FOUR days go by, and finally my patience had run out. I texted the Service Advisor from the number he texted me at during my initial visit. I told him it had been nearly two weeks since he told me he was going to get an answer on why they were quoting double from what I was told. He texts me back, almost immediately, saying "Warranty rate to do the job is 8 hours. Being that it is not under warranty, we would not go by that time. The tech said he can do it for 14 hours."
So let me get this straight, and I know that warranty labor times are ALWAYS tight and usually undercut, but you're telling me that your tech needs nearly DOUBLE THE TIME to do this job? I'm not going to pay for the tech to take his sweet, sweet time and lollygag around trying to figure it out. From the get go, I have been pretty confident to say that this is NOT the heater core and he's just padding his time so they can get in there and ACTUALLY find the problem.
Anyways, I've had enough of this guy and this dealership as a whole. I called another one last night and explained the situation over the phone to the Service Advisor who seemed stunned at how it has all played out. She told me there is no way it should take that long, and even if it were a heater core, the job would charge just under 7 hours, CUSTOMER PAY. So I made an appointment with them to drop the car off on Saturday and will be paying ANOTHER $165 to have THEIR DIAGNOSIS of the car, and then go from there. It's a shame that within the first two months of owning this thing I have had nothing but headaches over it. I'll update as it progresses.
