| Tuesday, June 28, 2005 |
11:52 - Some large men to see you, sir
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Oh, did I hear someone ask for an update on the car?
No? Well, tough.
Yesterday morning I was scheduled to drive the car in to Bob Lewis so they could investigate the idle problem that is still evident even after replacing the battery which they reported was bad, when the car wouldn't start two Thursdays ago. Vacuum leak? Solenoid valves going haywire? Battery haunted? All in my mind? Everything's working fine now for the first time in six years, and up till right now the car was supposed to idle at 1000 after running for a few minutes? We'd find out yesterday morning, when I was to drive around one of the technicians so he could see the behavior for himself.
Well, that was the plan, anyway. I went out to the car, put in the key, and—guess what?
Okay, that was an easy one. You get no points. Yeah, that's right, battery dead.
This did not make me happy. Woke up roommate, got bleary jump, drove to Bob Lewis, parked in the breezeway, stomped in waving my arms and making screeching pterodactyl-like sounds. Matt, the long-suffering evil scheming innocent little lamb of a serial wallet rapist, shielded himself from me with a large hulking technician with "Sean" embroidered on his namebadge and a big linebacker grin on his shaved-bald-with-goatee countenance. He told me that, daaahh, when the alternator's starting to go bad and not providing enough power, the engine computer kicks up the idle a couple of minutes after startup to about 1000 so it can charge the battery faster, boo-awss.
Of course. Why had nobody at the dealership advanced this theory before? Various friends had made grumbling noises that sounded like "alternator" over the course of this debacle, but for one thing, my alternator is less than three years old, and for another, I hadn't yet been able to get a clear yea or nay from Matt or any of his oilstained minions as to whether the idle problem even existed or wasn't just normal behavior. I'd explained the problem to him like nine times over the phone, and at last contact he'd still been telling me things like, "Well, if the air conditioner comes on, you should expect to see the revs drop briefly. Are you sure you're not just seeing that?"
So I caught the shuttle to work, after authorizing a big fat zero (again) on the approved diagnostic and repair work and putting a big red dot on the work order indicating that I was a repeat-return customer whose problems have still not been resolved (and thus a top priority), and awaited the inevitable phone call. Which came at arount 2:00.
"So, I've got some news for you," Matt said, "And it's not exactly good."
I love when conversations begin this way.
He proceeded to tell me that yes, they'd confirmed that the alternator was indeed going bad and was only providing about 10 volts after the engine warms up, although it's got a normal output level at startup. Also there's a drop of about a volt over the lengths of both the positive and negative battery cables, both of which also need to be replaced. Total repair costs estimated at about $1000. "I can get that discounted to about $875," he said, helpfully.
"I'll call you back," I said as evenly as I could. I felt like the things I was about to say didn't need to have been transmitted over the phone lines.
You'll recall that a large part of why I allowed Bob Lewis to go ahead with the $220 battery replacement last week ($100 parts, $120 labor) was that the labor cost included complete testing of the charging system, which presumably would have found any and all problems with the alternator, not to mention the battery cables. Otherwise, if I didn't think they'd actually do said testing of the charging system, I'd have had my friend meet me in the parking lot and we'd have replaced the battery ourselves. But instead it looked like that $120 was pretty much tossed into the air as confetti, for all the good it did my car. And now my new battery was probably damaged, too.
I called up Lance; he drove to get me at work, with another friend who was over at the time. I spent the car ride sitting darkly in the backseat, rehearsing price breakdowns and argumentative techniques. You see, let me make clear before we go any further that this was going to be my very first face-to-face confrontation with a service person with whom I had a serious beef. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was going to say, and had comebacks for potential curveballs. By the time we parked, I had a pretty good script worked out.
First stop was the cashier. "If you'd be so kind, please bring my car around," I told her. "I believe some money will be changing hands."
Which direction, I didn't specify.
Then the three of us parked ourselves in front of Matt's desk. I'm sure I looked like the world's nerdiest mob boss, with my own brace of hired goons watching my shoulders. It took about ten full minutes for Matt to finish filing midday papers, calling customers, and entering information into the computer. Finally he was ready for me.
"I think I'll do the repair myself," I told him. I've got the repair manual. I have AutoZone. I think I can handle this. "So let's just close out the paperwork and bring this unhappy little chapter to an end."
As he complied, I went on: "Also I think I'm going to have to ask for some money back, as I'm sure you'll agree is fair."
Of course he didn't. So I asked for a pen and a sheet of paper. On it, I wrote out the following:
What I have given Bob Lewis:
$900 (in parts and labor for miscellaneous replacements involving the engine electricals—MAF sensor, ignition coil)
$250 (parts and labor, for the battery)
1 slightly used car, otherwise in fine mechanical shape
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$1150 plus a working car.
The car that's currently being brought out of the garage, I pointed out with a gesture over my shoulder (as though the timing had been preplanned, my car was just being driven out into the breezeway behind me as I said this), is worth significantly less to me than the above.
In fact, considering that I'd been quoted $1000 damage for a busted alternator, which had been perfectly fine when I gave the car to them and showed its first signs of malfunction the moment I drove it off the parking lot after the MAF/ignition-coil service, one might indeed consider that the car out in the breezeway now comes with a built-in $1000 liability, even after factoring in my existing cash outlay and any correct work that's been done in exchange for it. And, I pointed out, I could probably make that stick in small claims court.
So, I went on, drawing another line:
What I'm going to ask for is $500, which I believe is more than fair. And that breaks down as follows:
$250 for the battery, parts and labor, which didn't need to be replaced after all, because the damage to the battery seems to have been caused by the bad alternator and the labor was completely worthless from all I can see
$150 for the labor on the initial $900 service, which a) should have caught any potential problems with the alternator, and/or b) caused the alternator to die in the first place, which I don't feel like paying for
$100 for my time (e.g. my labor), driving back and forth to the dealership, getting jumpstarts, mooching rides off friends, and generally wondering (often in long rambling diatribes on the blog) whether I'm getting reamed by this whole process.
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$500 even.
Compared to challenging them for the full $1000, I said, this seems like a nice equitable solution.
So at that point I stood back and awaited his reaction. Naturally, throughout the diatribe Matt had started looking more and more sullen—or was it insulted?—and seemed to be filling out a piece of paper rather than looking at what I was doing. And when it was his turn to talk, he said—of course—that he sympathized with my frustration, said that he himself had been getting really annoyed at this car. But, he said—of course—that from the shop's perspective, the failures I've seen have all been just that much bad luck—part after part failing on top of each other, all cascading together while they're working on solving other problems, and the most Bob Lewis can be held liable for is for not finding certain things wrong with the charging system that, for whatever reason, were legitimately not evident while the car was in the garage.
And, he went on after I persisted, the entire department full of service directors—the only ones with the authority to cut refund checks—was out of the office today, and won't be back until Wednesday. Out at a service directors' playday at Raging Waters, I would imagine.
So in the end I had to leave Bob Lewis empty-handed—toting only a piece of closed-out paperwork with the politely worded "Customer has declined repair at this time", my car key, and the business card of the director who'd be returning with his suntan on Wednesday. Naturally the car wouldn't start, so I jumped it off Lance's car (just like in Dukes of Hazzard—wait, actually not at all like that), swapped keys with him, and drove back to work while the other two drove my car home.
So that would seem to be the end of my attempts to get good service from Bob Lewis—but the overall verdict as to their dedication to the customer will come after I speak with Mr. Director Man and find out how he intends to deal with a customer who bought his Jetta here at Bob Lewis six years ago and has been bringing it back for every service, major and minor, since that date; and whose roommate bought his car from Bob Lewis a year later, and has been bringing it back for every service, major and minor, since that date; and who, judging by the condition of this $100-bill-eating car, is going to shortly be in the market for a new car of some sort, and will be viewing the outcome of this dispute as a make-or-break opportunity for whether Bob Lewis will be selling me or anyone I know any cars in the future. (To say nothing, I suppose, of someone who happens to have been documenting every sordid little detail of this fun-filled extravaganza back to and including the 80,000-mile service on a blog with a fairly wide readership, many members of which have indicated a keen interest in seeing how the story turns out. There is one entry yet to write, Mr. Director Man, one that just might show up on Google searches for "Bob Lewis VW". Would you like this story to have a happy ending... or a sad ending?)
And in the meantime, I get to dive headlong into the engine bay of my car and figure out how to replace the alternator and battery cables myself. Buying the parts seems a slam-dunk; Kragen doesn't have any in stock at any of its stores throughout the USA, and Napa closes at 6:00, but AutoZone has all kinds of everything I need—I have only to decide which amperage of alternator is right for my car (the Bentley manual, stupidly enough, doesn't specify). And I've bought a multimeter, as well as this thing from someone on Ebay, which is used for pulling the spark plug wires off the connectors way down deep in the engine block, which has to be done before the big plastic carapace can be removed. (Don't let this picture fool you; it's of a 2001 Jetta, where the plug wires have little plastic collars on them that you can grab and pull the wires out without any special tools. Mine, a 1999, has no such accommodation. Of course.)
Wish me luck. The alternator will cost me about $250 (minus the $90 core charge, which I reportedly can be reimbursed for if I turn it in at AutoZone so it can be sent back for remanufacturing), and the battery cables will be about $50 each, but that's a far cry from the $1000 I'd be out if I let Bob Lewis do it. And even if I don't see a penny of refund, which I sort of expect is what will happen, at least I'll be off and running on the road to doing this crap myself from now on.
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Brian Tiemann
