I had my oil changed at my local stealership the past week. On the previous oil change they did, I was only filled up with 6 Qts. I checked it when I got home and found it to be a quart low. I had an extra quart at home so "no problem." Fast foward to last week. I go in to the service dept. and say "I need an oil change and please fill it with 7 Qts. this time." The service guy says, "It only takes 6 qts." I say, "No, it takes 7 qts. Look in the manual." He calls over the service manager. The service manager agrees with me. This leaves me wondering, what other "oversights" do stealerships do?

 

Our lube tech was a 20 something high school drop out who made the door look smarter than himself.

The techs will use your vehicle to get warranty parts to fix stuff on the sides or their own vehicle.

When you ask for Motorcraft oil and pay extra they will take the bottled oil to thier own trucks and still fill yours up with the bulk oil.

Our tranny guy would order all the seals/valves/solenoids to reman your tranny and only replace what was broken putting the rest of the parts in his toolbox. We used to go to him for parts sometimes ...

I've seen them yank new tires off of cars/trucks coming off the carrier and swap them for used tires.

Fabricate leaks just to make more money.

Diagnose the 5.4 cold start knock in the early model trucks to get engines replaced at 35k miles. My good buddy has his 5.4 replaced about 35,200 because of this cold start knock. My ex-stepfather diagnosed it without even starting the truck and we ordered a new motor from Ford.

I will not tell you which dealership I worked for but it wasn't anywhere near where I live now.

Disclaimer not all dealerships run this way. I actually worked at 2 different dealers and the whole free parts (warranty) thing was crazy.

 

I have a better one for you. When I brought my truck to the dealer for it's first oil change, it was found that apparently both the factory and the new car prep guys neglected to insure that my tranny had the proper level of fluid in it. How does that happen????

mikebaby

 

I check my oil before I leave the dealership. When I have a rotation done, I look at the weights before I take it in and I check to see they have been moved to proper location. So far, have not had a problem, but i really hate having my truck serviced where I can not watch what goes on.

 

this is why i change my own oil, i don't give a fluck if i can get free oil changes for life or not...

 

I can't stand most people at the dealer . . .

I went to my local dealer the other day to order some interior paint and the chump tried to tell me that Ford doesn't have any interior paint in their system, only exterior.

 

Rockwall Ford by my house is like that they pull it into a building where you can't see what's going on.


Unless things have changed looking up any paint was a pita. Basically we used accessory guides and then went to a paint code book to look up the part numbers.

 

I found it funny that F-150Truckin was able to send me a WHOLE chart with all of the paint codes exterior/interior even including the part numbers. The guy was just lazy and he didn't care about helping me out.

 

I remember one of my last comission checks from the ford dealer went to buying the latest and greatest 28.8k US Robotics modem. Now a days I would love to sell parts and do something similar to fordparts.com

Ok I'll shut up and quit complaining about my IT job and walk over to Starbucks.

 

And you knew all this was going on and didn't do anything?

 

I did mine last week. Took 7 quarts.

 

What would you have suggested? When I worked dealerships, many years ago, the owner’s son was the head of the department. He stole as a standard practice.
When I was a kid pumping gas you were 'encouraged' to sell things that were not needed.
Then you also had to pay a kickback every payday for 'shortages'.
Complain to whom?
The government?
Labor department does not work for the employee.

When I got into management I worked to clean this sort of thing up. It's a full time job. Most employees, supervisors, entry level management, feel that little perks or 'extra profit incentives' are not really a problem, but a benefit.

Upper management in big companies fight it, but I've watched district managers get fired for reporting their bosses’ thefts...

Best thing you can do is move on to another place where that crap is not tolerated.
My wife quite after ten years at a major bank when she was told that her branch had to make a quota on selling securities.
The only way to do it was lie to the customers.
She wouldn't do it.
The other branch managers would.
Thus her branch didn't make quota.
They couldn't tell you in writing to steal, but if you didn't...
She quit, just walked away.
Dealerships are not the only place this stuff happens.
Chris

 

Same thing with me.....last oil change receipt says they put on a filter and 6 quarts of oil. Looks like I'm gonna go back to changing my own again. I just hated the hassle of getting rid of the old stuff and I don't have a grease gun to lube the truck myself...Looks like I'll be buying one of those too, unless these new trucks have all sealed stuff.

 

That's what I just started doing again. At least I KNOW it has the correct oil (Mobil 1 5w20)
Plus, it's very easy.

 

The thing I don't understand is it shouldn't matter how many quarts they think it takes, if they think it takes 4 or 20, after they get done.......maybe they should have a look at that little mysterious yellow handled thing on the left side of the engine . All kinds of magical things can happen if they pull that out and have a look at it. If they "thought" it took 6, changed the oil and then checked it, then they would have quickly found the error in their ways. I wonder how many new 150's are riding around that town with a low oil level? I work at a dealer and I do pretty much everything you can do to a car there, including oil changes, and when I get done, I run the engine real quick to fill the filter, let it sit for a minute or so and CHECK THE DAMN OIL before the customer gets it back. Not checking the oil after changing it is like rebulding an engine and not starting it......And on the thing about watching your car get serviced.....I don't know if I agree with that too much. I don't mind maybe showing them something or whatever, but there is no way I could properly work on someones car with them hovering over my shoulder and asking me questions. Or even if they had another room with a window, I still wouldn't like that at all. There's way to much BSing going on in our shop to have a customer watching. Nothing to do with the vehicles, just plain BSing and the normal stuff we do every day, what makes it a shop. Ok, I'm done now!!