2014 CHRYSLER Town and Country

Customer Service: 5 Quality Of Work: 5 Friendliness: 5 Pricing: 5 Overall Experience: 5

Ok, so I had a positive experience with Starr Motors and you can read all about it. But, it wouldn't do it justice if I didn't tell you about the HORRIBLE experience I had at Hall Dodge in Chesapeake first. So:My story starts on July 21, 2016 when I called Hall Dodge in Chesapeake for warranty service on my 2015 Ram. It was a Thursday, and I spoke with a lady on the phone. I explained to her in detail what the problem(s) were with my vehicle, and made an appointment for Friday of the next week (8 days later). I spent a good deal of my time on the phone with her, and I explained to her that I was going out of town and would leave my Ram with them for a whole week, so they should have plenty of time to make the warranty repairs. When I arrived on Friday the 29th of July, they had no clue who I was and I had to spend another 45 minutes of my time going through the process again. So, what was the point of making an appointment? It should be noted that I spent about an hour typing out a 1 full page (single spaced) explanation of the exact mechanical symptoms I was experiencing, almost entirely when stopping or starting from a stop.On Thursday of the following week, I received a phone call stating that the mechanic drove my Ram on the highway and couldnt reproduce the sounds. Im thinking, So what? Find the problem and fix it. But apparently there is a magical hearing test that vehicles must pass before warranty repairs can be made. Well, they never found anything. I was not surprised at all. In fact, I expected them to not find any reportable problems. To say I was angry is an understatement, and I did get a little hot with the young lady on the phone prior to picking my truck up. To the mechanics credit, when I picked up my truck on August 1st, I drove my truck with the mechanic and to my astonishment I couldnt repeat the sounds either. I noticed at this time a new dent in the rear passenger door of my 2015 truck, but as I already embarrassed myself losing my temper on the phone and considering I dented the truck myself already, I didnt say anything. I just tucked tail and drove home feeling rather foolish. The next day, the sounds magically reappeared. About two weeks later, I went to the dealership right from work. I drove around the parking lot with the mechanic and was finally able to produce the intermittent sound on demand. The mechanic said it was a lower control arm and ball joint. The two of us walked inside, and the service advisor said he would order the part. Well give you a call when the part comes in, he said. I asked, So Im good to go, to which he replied Youre good to go. This was on a Tuesday. By Wednesday the following week I still hadnt heard anything, so I called the phone number on the website. The phone was answered by a young lady (well call her young lady # 1). Young lady number one says something like, Welcome to Hall, a mile one company. How may I assist you today? I told her I needed to speak with the service advisor at Hall Dodge in Chesapeake. May I place you on hold for a brief moment while I transfer you? she says. So, young lady number two answers the phone, Welcome to Hall, a mile one company. How may I assist you today? Again, I ask to speak with the service advisor at Hall Dodge. Young lady #2 replies May I place you on hold for a brief moment while I transfer you? To my dismay, Young lady #3 answers the phone, Welcome to Hall, a mile one company. How may I assist you today? Doing my best to keep my composure, again I ask to speak with the service department. Again, the response is May I place you on hold for a brief moment while I transfer you? I wonder what would have happened if I said NO? Anyways, as you might have guessed, young lady #4 answers the phone Welcome to Hall, a mile one company. How may I assist you today? Ok, so this isnt funny and Im about to burst a blood vessel at this point. Customer service at Hall Dodge Chesapeake I demanded. Again, May I place you on hold for a brief moment while I transfer you? This time, it goes to a voicemail. Its like 3 oclock in the afternoon, so I know they are still open. I left a message with a call-back number and then hung up. Against my better judgement, I called back 15 minutes later, and repeated the above scenario. At this point, Im just plain pissed off. I did not hear from them that day or the next. So, about 4pm the next day, Thursday, I repeated my previous days aggravating phone call experience, only this time I got ahold of the service advisor. Would you believe, they had not ordered any parts and didnt have the slightest clue what I was talking about? I was pretty firm with the lady on the phone. She told me that she would have to get the service managers approval and couldnt just order the part. I was not accepting the incompetent replies at this point, and she transferred me to her manager who told me that the service advisor I had spoken with nearly two weeks prior had been fired and that he didnt order my part. He said that they would order it and call me when it came in. A few days later I received a phone call from the service department, and I made an appointment to bring in my truck. I told the lady on the phone that I needed a rental car, and that I wasnt going to be the one to pay for it. So, I arrived on time as scheduled. At this time, I showed the service lady the dent in the door of my truck. She acted surprised that anything like this would happen, but I gotta tell you: if you imagined the smallest and most jacked up parking lot possible, you wouldnt come close to rendering the circus this dealer actually has going on in front of a so-called service department. Its almost unthinkable that vehicles dont regularly leave there with dents. They say it was only supposed to be a temporary location, but it was permanent enough to paint Hall Dodge, on the front. Maybe they should have a valet to shuttle the vehicles to another parking lot. Anyways, again they acted like it was a complete surprise that I was there. Let me call the rental car department and check to see if something is available, says the lady to me. Im thinking What do you mean Check and See?? Thats why I made and appointment. Anyways, fast forward past the rental situation that had me waiting around and burning my valuable time. I get a phone call from the same service lady a few days later. She says, They found the problem. It is a problem with the alignment of the hood, and proceeds to explain that they were able to reproduce a sound and that they could not fix the problem there. She tells me that my truck needs to go to their body shop 1 hour away in Virginia Beach, and that I needed to drive it there because they didnt Have anyone available. I dont see how thats my problem, and I told her that Im not driving 1.5 hours 1 way from my house to get an estimate for a warranty repair. So, she tells me that I can go to the Toyota dealer next-door (literally, next door) and get the quote. So, I pick up my truck after work and drive to the Toyota dealer. First off, the Toyota place tells me that I have to pay for the quote, and then they tell me that they only do repair quotes by appointment and that I would have to come back. So, I got up early on a Saturday and drove 40 minutes 1 way and wasted about an hour of my time there to get this quote that the Dodge dealer should have arranged and paid for themselves. Really, how hard is it for them to have a driver move it LITERALLY 400 feet away? Anyways, I come back on Monday and give the quote to the Service manager. I showed him the dent in my door, and he said Well take care of that when you bring it back.After this, I called the service department to schedule the repair to my truck. Now, the reason I bought a truck in the first place is because I live to hunt and I need it for hunting season. Hunting is way more important to me that a lot of things in this world, so I am going to be really pissed off if they cant fix this before the start of hunting season. I explained to the service lady on the phone that I was going for training and would return with a narrow window of time to have the repairs completed: all under warranty mind you. I told her that I need a rental again, and that it needed to be a small SUV so that I could get to my bow hunting stand while my truck was in the shop. She said ok. When I arrived at the Dodge dealer, she says to me I though you were just going to drop it off at the Toyota dealer. To which I replied, Why would I do that? This is Dodges problem, not mine. And I need a rental car. Thats your problem, not the Toyota dealers problem. So, she says, Let me call and see if we have a rental car available. Then she tells me to have a seat, that it will Be a while because they have to take care of Hyundai first. Again, its my time they are burning up and I am thinking, Why bother making an appointment at all. If I did business this way, I would be out of a job!Now, I dont fix cars or know much about mechanics, but I know about customer service. I am a low-level manager in the healthcare field. If a patient was sick, and made an appointment with a physician, can you imagine how it would go over if the receptionist said, Oh, you want to see a Physician today. Take a seat, and let me see if someone will be available to see you. Imagine if, after waiting for hours for a physician to be available, the Dr. says, Im sorry about your nausea and vomiting, but I have to physically see you vomit and have diarrhea before I can run any tests. We cant just start fixing things without knowing there is a problem. And imagine if you will, after the same patient comes back another time and vomits in the physicians waiting room, that the physician ordered an MRI. The results of the MRI indicate a horrible gastric problem requiring surgery and implant of a graft, so the physician schedules the patient for surgery. Come the morning of the surgery, imagine the same patient arrives and the nurse says, Oh, you wanted to have surgery today. Let me see if there is a surgeon available, and after long wait a surgeon then tells the patient, We can do your surgery, but youll have to drive an hour away and go pick up your graft because we dont have anyone to go get it for you. I think that surgeon and physician would be broke and unemployed. People dont accept this level of incompetence from any other type of business, why is it ok for a so-called professional auto dealer? What if your house was damaged in a storm, and the insurance company hired a contractor to repair your roof; and on the day it was to be repaired, the contractor says We are gonna need you to drive 1.5 hours one way to go pick up the lumber for us because we dont have anyone to do it.? I would say, Youre fired and get off my property. Then I would tell my insurance company to hire someone else. The problem as I see it is that this dealer, or more specifically the service department, is mostly concerned with their own program. They are concerned with how things affect them, how it affects their flow, and what works best for them. They just want to come to work, have an easy under-control day, and then go home on time with no Hiccups. Thats not the reality of business, and certainly not the reality of good customer service. I should never, ever be asked to transport my vehicle anywhere FOR the dealer who is being PAID by Chrysler to service my vehicle which is, essentially, under a service contract for a given period of time. I PAID for a vehicle with new-car warranty. That is part of the price of the vehicle. Chrysler pays the dealership very well to service that obligation. It seems to me that the staff of the service department has an employee-centric business practice, instead of being centered on the customer. UPDATE: I received my truck back from Hall Dodge and, surprise-surprise, the clunk is still there. Not only that, but Hall had my truck for 4 days to do roughly $65 worth of work. Because I paid for the estimate from the Toyota dealer, I know that repairs were supposed to cost over $1,000, which was to include doing paint work to the hood and fender since the two panels were rubbing. However, when I picked it up I saw the bill from Toyota and it was only about $65. I saw no evidence of any kind that they did paint work and the wear was still present on the hood and fender. Basically, the Toyota dealer just did a better job at re-aligning the hood and fender so that the panel gaps were right. In a way it is better that they didnt do any paint work since it is about impossible to match factory paint. There is always overspray and drips that are visible. But, they didnt need it for 4 days. To their credit, I received my truck back with both dents removed, although there are still small marks. I was about exasperated with all the time I wasted for Hall to accomplish next to nothing and still not solve the problem.When I moved to Suffolk VA, I was warned not to deal with Starr Motors. Out of desperation, I decided to give Starr a chance. After work, I drove over and talked to an advisor and took a ride with a technician. He Heard the sound right away, and said I needed to make an appointment. He said they would put some sensors on it and put the truck up on some chassis to rattle it; or something to that effect. I made an appointment with a guy named Chad. When I showed up for the appointment, I had a similar experience to Hall in that they didnt have me Down for an appointment. But the similarities between the two dealers stops there. First off, they immediately got me a rental and it was a truck! Its hunting season, and I was so glad to have a truck and not a Nissan Altima. I start thinking about archery season and the end of last years archery season, which is the entire reason that I bought a 4x4 in the first place, so the rental truck was appreciated. It shows consideration for my time and lifestyle. Starr found and fixed the problem of course. It was a control arm and ball joint. They were never hard to reach by phone and they actually followed through on my questions. The day before I picked my Ram up, they said that they had already completed the repair but that the technician wanted to drive it one more time after it had Sat overnight. The next day they called me and told me that Chrysler would pay for the alignment, but that the caster/camber was out and that was not covered. They said it would be $75 bucks and wanted to know if I just wanted to take care of it while they were doing the alignment. Everything was 100% when I picked up my truck. No more knocking and somehow it feels a little tighter and rides a little straighter, if that makes sense. I wouldnt hesitate to take my vehicle to Starr Motors again. They were professional, thoughtful, and thorough! It is unbelievable that Hall couldnt muster up the wherewithal to render the same service.

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