Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 02/24/18> Well it wasn’t as bad as expected…

I was dreading Friday as I told you all in the previous Daily Dose, but it wasn’t as bad as anticipated having to get the truck taken care of for that safety recall. Planet Ford actually did a pretty good job of getting the work completed in the time frame that they actually told me it would take to it.

Earlier in the week I had gone by their location and made an appointment for Friday to get the work done, the appointment was scheduled for 10:00 A M so I arrived ten minutes before the appointment. I had everything I needed, all the keys to the truck and the recall notice. So I pulled up to the service department and went inside to check in. The service department has eight people who act as service representatives that write up the work orders. Even though there was only was other customer physically in there speaking to a service rep I still ended up waiting over five minutes before a service rep acknowledged me and ask how they could help me. The ringing phones evidently take precedence over live customers and their phones are constantly ringing.

Frank finally motioned me to come to his spot and proceeded to check me in. He took my paper work and keys and started looking over the recall letter. He then said, “Okay, we should have this ready later this afternoon around 4:30 or 5:00 for you to pick it back up.” Needless to say that was not what I wanted to hear. I proceeded to explain to Frank that his co-worker had told me earlier in the week that it was a two hour job and I expected to wait for the work to be completed, I wasn’t dropping it off and coming back to pick it up.

“If you had scheduled an appointment it would be, but we have to work it in.”, Frank said. Well now I’m starting to get just a bit agitated, “I have an appointment, Michelle wrote the date and time right there on the top of the notice, you see it?” I responded. He took another look and said he did but he didn’t see it in the computer. Turned out that Michelle entered it under the fleet company name and not mine, Frank had asked my name and phone number, so we got that straightened out and he then said it would be a couple hours, like Michelle had told me. He then told me where the waiting area was located and pointed me in that direction.

This Ford dealership had recently undergone an extensive expansion project and had separated the Ford area from their Lincoln area; previously it shared the same space as far as the service department space. One thing that was different was that dealership had added a cashier to the “snack bar area”, so the fountain drinks and little snacks that had been previously free to customers and employees were now being charged for if you wanted one. The coffee was still free so it least they have something to keep their customers awake while they wait that is free.

It is pretty common knowledge that car dealerships don’t make their money selling cars, they make their money on servicing the cars after the sale. The service shop and body shop are the cash cow for automobile dealerships. The dealerships and most independent shops use a method of determining the amount of labor required doing a repair and that is the “bible” of the industry, the flat rate manual. This book has a labor time estimate for every type of repair that can be imagined on a vehicle and generally favors the shop rather than the consumer when it comes to estimating the amount of time it takes to do a repair. Shops will argue differently but that is why most shops have learned that it is best when the customer doesn’t wait for the repair to be done, it is a lot easier to hide the actual amount of time it takes to do the repair if the customer is not there to see what is going on and how long it actually takes.

The other thing that these dealerships and chain type repair facilities have come to include in their billing is “shop fees”. These fees range in amounts, I have seen them as little as $7.99 to as much as $59.00 and it is to cover the “incidentals” like shop rags and cleaner fluid and such are what I have been told. There is a bunch of money made each day on shop fees as every repair gets these tacked on to the bill regardless of the repair. Also you will notice other fees like environmental impact fees or disposal fees for oil and tires. They sell the used oil to recycling companies so they make a profit there and the tires I’m not sure about but I would guess they aren’t paying someone $4.00 to come pick them up like they have charged you that $4.00 fee, they are making something in the deal.

I did run into a long time friend / customer in the waiting area, he has the same year truck as the one I drive, he was there to get his radio repaired. Well he was actually there to pick his truck up; he had dropped it off two days earlier to be repaired. He told me that the dealership had taken the dash apart and extracted his radio, took it apart and diagnosed the problem. The radio was repairable, that was the good news, the bad news was that they didn’t have the part needed to make the repair and it would take ten to twelve days for them to get the part it. Well he couldn’t be without his truck for two weeks, he needs it for work as well and he is an independent contractor who works hard for his money. Renting a truck for two weeks just for him to be able to listen to music while he worked didn’t make sense so he had them put the radio back in and he’ll bring it back and get it repaired when they get the part. His bill was $235 to tell him it will cost him $630 to get it fixed.

He also had received the safety recall letter that my truck was there for getting repaired; he said he hadn’t gotten that taken care of yet. After we discussed it for a few minutes he decided it was something that he should probably get done so he went to the service rep and asked if when he brings the truck back for the radio repair if they could do the recall warranty work as well. They told him that they could not do it at the same time; he would have to bring that back at a separate time to have that work done.

This dealership is just jacking him around in my opinion, I was able to get an appointment in basically three days, and they lead him to believe that they are booked up more than 12 days in advance for that repair. What is up with that? More shop fees is my guess. By separating out the repairs and getting them on separate invoices the dealership can rake up on fees. Pretty nice business model they have working I’d say.

He must really like his radio to spend damn near $900 to get it fixed and several days and trips to the dealership is all I have to say to that. He told me he had already spent $12,000 on having a new rebuilt engine put in that truck, the dealership told him that even though the owner’s manual says change the oil every 10,000 miles you should change it every 5,000 miles. His motor gave out at 148,000 miles and he said he religiously changed the oil as the manual said to do. Hell, I do the 10,000 mile oil change as well and mine is at 188,000 right now so I may be driving a ticking time bomb with that engine.

The time past quickly as we visited and at 12:10 the girl brought me my keys and paper work, I was good to go. So what I ended up dreading to do turned out to not be such a bad ordeal after all. Visiting with Bill made the time pass pretty quickly and had he not told me about the engine issue he had with his truck it would have been better for me. Now I just have to make it another 12,000 miles or so and this truck will be probably removed from service and replaced, but I am sure I’ll be wondering about the engine until then.

Until next time,
@sultnpapper

https://sola.ai/sultnpapper