You couldn’t pay me enough to work at a dealership right now. I’m hard-pressed to think of one manufacturer that hasn’t seen some kind of recall this year, and the recalls run the spread from annoying (Acura’s recall for the TSX’s tire label) to the serious (GM’s ignition switches) and the absolutely horrific (anything with a Takata-manufactured airbag inflator). If you work at a GM dealership, you’re in service, tech, or parts, and are not drinking yourself to death after each day of dealing with customers, please tell me how you’re doing it, because the thought of me being in your shoes is enough to make me reach for a bottle. The calls keep coming in, from people who saw the recall info on Good Morning America and are suddenly panicking because that cheerful little Honda Civic that they just purchased a few months ago is actually a killer poised to strike at any moment, ready to kill you and your family in a grotesque manner like you would never, ever believe. Coming up next…
Now, in theory, the idea is that you, as the owner of the car, coordinate with either the dealership you bought the car from or a local dealership aligned with the manufacturer of your vehicle, and work out how to get your car fixed. For example, if your Chevy Cobalt’s ignition switch is the same one that it left the factory with, you don’t take the car to the Toyota dealership you purchased the car from, when it was sitting in the back corner of it’s used car lot. It doesn’t work that way. Besides, Toyota has their hands tied with their own problems right now and they could honestly give a rat’s ass about your Cobalt.
But the media has spoken, and your death machine parked outside in the driveway must be fixed. Here’s where the problems occur: from a tech or parts perspective, the customers are not a logical bunch. If you want a good analogy of what we are seeing, imagine a stampede: they are scared, they are running around trying to fix the problem they have, they will not hesitate to cause harm to an outsider trying to honestly help, and when it’s all said and done, all that’s left is the battered body of the one brave soul who tried to bring calm to the situation and a whole lot of bullshit.
Another issue is between the manufacturer and the dealerships themselves. Unfortunately one of my cars falls under the Takata airbag recall. So I went to the local dealer to ask questions about when I could get my car in to have the airbags serviced. What ended up happening is that I ended up teaching the service techs about the recall and giving them information that even the manufacturer had not disseminated down yet. I’ve heard of GM dealerships resorting to telling phone customers that “they were not aware of that recall, because GM tells the media before they tell the dealerships.” If it seems that I’m picking on GM, I AM, because they’ve all but recalled every damn car they have built within the last five years. I’m not kidding in the least when I say that if I was a GM tech at the beginning of 2014 that I’d rather be broke and homeless that sitting at that phone, dealing with that crap.
For those about to talk to that customer…hang in there, buddy.
Well, Bryan, I am a GM tech and the only way I’m not drinking myself to death at the end of the day, is the cheap bastards don’t pay me enough to go buy alcohol.
That isn’t even a punchline so much as it’s a sad truth.
Customer…
This car’s not safe to drive!!!
Us…
Your car is perfectly safe to drive.
It’s just not safe to crash!
That is awesome!
I can understand why GM is calling the press for their upcoming recalls because they got butchered for hiding previous recalls. They are very stupid not contacting GM dealers first. They are especially stupid in thinking the media won’t spin the story into “EVERYONE’S GONNA DIE!” type of story. Just look at how they now have the more sheepish public in a panic thinking the whole world is going to die from Ebola. (BTW, the press got hammered recently for their scare tactic stories by both the gov’t and the CDC.)
I am GM parts guy since 1975. GM recall news has always been in the news media before the campaigns were enacted. The dealers have little
or no information in advance of John Q Public. When John contacts the dealership, he is very frustrated that the “fix” is not there waiting for him.
At least with the Cobalt issue, there were rental cars available for those
unwilling to drive the cars until the parts arrived. Also you can’t order spare
keys for the affected vehicles, as there is a hold on ordering them. It’s a
huge problem if the customer loses one.
If there is an upside, it’s that owners are visiting the dealer, and buying
other services, and vehicles.
The public was notified before Honda dealers were about the takata inflator recalls as well. And the way they are spinning it is that they can all explode and through ied style shrapnel all over the car. Can they explode? Yes. Are they all prone to this destruction? No. Only in extremely humid climates do you see a major failure. Most of the country is fine. But for those that really need the inflators replaced, quite a few of them are on national backorder with no known release date.
My wife drives an ’04 Lancer Ralliart wagon. It has four airbags, but only the passenger bag is affected by the recall. Being an internet using gearhead, I’d been watching this unfold for a while. I finally found my car on the list, and called last week (before the recall letter arrived) and got scheduled for this morning.
The letter came later on the day I made the appointment, so I beat the rush. They scheduled the car for four hours, but it took the tech until almost 5 PM to finish. I had it in there at 8:30, and I honestly believe they were starting it then.
The service writer was very apologetic that it wasn’t done by mid-day; I told her to tell the tech that I had done a few heater cores on older, less-complicated cars, and that I totally understood. She said that my car was the third one, and they’re trying to figure out how to do them faster.
I had them change the cabin filter at the same time. I told them at drop off that they could get a few bucks from me that way, too.
Overall, it was pretty pain-free. Since I’m in Florida, I’m glad to have it done. We parked the car and stopped driving it when I found it on the list. The car was sold new in South Florida, and it’s ten years old, so I didn’t want to chance it, even with it being just the passenger bag (the letter said to not carry a passenger).