Service Charges/Culture

[IMADreamer]

Car buying from a dealership is the most miserable experience on the planet. Talk about an industry that has figured out how to bend over their customers any way they can.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Everything is such a hassle and feels like a rip of.

I bought my daughter a new car for college in August. Paid the ridiculous $500.00 processing/doc fee at the dealership...

A month later, the title and paperwork still hasn't arrived so I am forced to pay a late penalty of $25.00 at the DMV. Whatever. So, I go to the DMV title in hand and have everything I need to pay sales tax and license (I've bought so many cars that I always have what I need when I get to the DMV). Anyway, wait about an hour in the DMV to finally get my number called by the clerk. She sees that I have not been put as the "assignee" on the title, it's still the dealer. She was nice enough to tell me if I came back the same day, she wouldn't make me wait again. So, I call the dealership and let them know that I am very upset to have spent an hour at the DMV and now have to make another 1.5 hour roundtrip to them to get them to correct the title. I also remind them that the paperwork was late and told them that I expect a refund for the processing/doc fee.

Their response was that I should have looked at the title prior to going to the DMV. My response was that I should assume incompetence and a hassle because you didn't do your job properly. They acted like I was completely out of line for being upset. I told them to warn the office clerk that I was on my way. They told me that I needed to calm down or they wouldn't correct the title and they would have security there when I arrived.

JFC - is incompetence and being ripped off the new norm?

I mean, if you consider paying $500 for someone to spend 10 minutes incorrectly filling out paper work incompetence and being ripped off, then yeah it's the new norm.

Car dealerships are the absolute worst. The starter on that 2007 honda accord I was talking about earlier went out a couple years ago. I called the dealership and told them it needed a new starter, asked how much it would be. They said to bring it in and they'd take a look at it and give me a call. Had it towed in. It was around $850!!

Called around and found a local shop that would do it for like $200. Called the tow truck and arranged to have them pick up the car at the dealership. Went to the dealership and they gave me an invoice for $158. There was of course the service/diagnostic fee plus a charge for paper towels, brooms, the toilet paper they used while on break to wipe their ass. [expletive] ridiculous. I was like, dude, y'all are charging just as much to tell me what I already knew than it's going to cost to have it fixed somewhere else. They couldn't have cared less. [expletive] those guys.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

The home repair services market is a cess pool because it's filled with buyers who have no good way of knowing who the good providers are. I hate having to call some random company I Googled because I only need this type of service once every 30 years or whatever. The chances that they will try and rip you off are well above 50%, I think. Anything I can possibly repair myself, I do it.

I've found doing repairs myself is going to have a very binary outcome. It's either going to be incredibly rewarding, done correctly, and save a lot of money. Or it's going to be a money pit that doesn't work and I'll have to call someone to come fix the bigger mess I created after wasting tens of hours plus whatever was spent in parts.

I've never gotten done with a project and immediately afterwards not been able to definitively answer "if i had to do it again, would i hire someone to do it"

Of course, hiring someone to do it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be done correctly either. So, there's always that.

[IMADreamer]

I think this applies too, we rarely have pizza delivered but for some reason a week ago we decided to get pizza hut. There was a 4.99 delivery fee. wtf? Does the driver get that? I doubt it. So it's our pizza, sales tax, this delivery fee, and a tip just to get pizza.

[GeddyWrox]

I think this applies too, we rarely have pizza delivered but for some reason a week ago we decided to get pizza hut. There was a 4.99 delivery fee. wtf? Does the driver get that? I doubt it. So it's our pizza, sales tax, this delivery fee, and a tip just to get pizza.

This is why I will go and pick it up 99/100 times. F that sh!t.

[IMADreamer]

I think this applies too, we rarely have pizza delivered but for some reason a week ago we decided to get pizza hut. There was a 4.99 delivery fee. wtf? Does the driver get that? I doubt it. So it's our pizza, sales tax, this delivery fee, and a tip just to get pizza.

This is why I will go and pick it up 99/100 times. F that sh!t.

Yeah, we will definitely be picking up from now on.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

About 15 years ago, before I worked here, an employee that was fired for drug use (like apparently coming in [expletive] up, working [expletive] up, driving company trucks [expletive] up) brought a gun into the office and demanded a meeting. Nothing happened, the guy in my position at the time managed to diffuse the situation. The cops showed up and arrested him.

At that time, security cameras were installed at both entrances. Fast forward to last week, one of the cameras quit working. The building supervisor checked the power, it's good. We took the other working camera off, connected it to the bad cameras connection, and the connection still works. Hooked the bad camera up to the good cameras connection, it didn't work. The camera is bad. Pure and simple.

Call ADT, the company they got the cameras from originally. Hey, we need a new camera with this type of connection, this is the model we have, here's a pic of the connectors. Something similar is good. Of course, their response is we need to come out and investigate. How much? Depends, minimum charge of $100. *head explode gif*

There is nothing to investigate. The building owner/supervisor has checked the power supply. It's good. The cables/connections from the monitor/system to the plug in are good. All we need is a camera. But....no! Can't just sell a camera when they can get a service charge to go along with it.

This also starts to bleed into right to repair stuff.

[IMADreamer]

Right to repair is going to be a mess. Our local John Deere dealer got bought by a giant conglomerate of stores. Service has already noticeably decline. A lot of their techs quit when the buyout happened and it sucks. The new guys are educated enough but they just don't seem to have the real world experience. It used to be you were charged when the tech got to your farm, now it's the second he leaves the dealership, which is a 30 minute drive. So we get charged for an hour of work no matter what when they come out.

[Popeye_Card]

Pro tip: open up the service panel on your A/C outdoor unit and write down the models for the capacitor and the contactor and then buy a spare of each on Amazon or wherever. They're super cheap if you buy them yourself and easy to install if you know how to disconnect power (and verify it is disconnected) and keep track of wires to put on the same terminals when making a swap. Both frequently fail and the service call plus absurd parts mark up is way more annoying than just taking care of it with parts on hand.

Is there soldering involved? I literally had a capacitor go back two months ago. I don't remember what it cost me but it was not cheap.

No. It's usually just slide connectors on the end of wires you push on to tabs on the components. I just checked, and I paid $11 for the capacitor on Amazon. I think they will try and charge you like $150 plus labor for the same thing. Bought a spare contactor for $30.

Capacitors are an easy swap, just make sure you watch a couple videos on how to do it. Even after shutting off power you need to verify that you discharge any stored energy in the capacitor before disconnecting.

[Popeye_Card]

Speaking of diagnostic fees and [expletive] car dealerships, the air-ride suspension crapped out in our Grand Cherokee a few months ago, so we took it into the dealer to get it checked out. They tell us it is a $500 diagnostic fee, then whatever repairs on top of that. So I kindly ask what exactly they do as a diagnostic that it costs $500? Because if it is just plugging in a laptop to check the error codes on the car's computer, that seems like a lot. The guy at the dealer gets [expletive] with me - "Well you don't have to pay it, and just not fix your Jeep." So I push back - "I want to fix my Jeep, I just want to know what all I'm getting for paying you $500." The service manager senses the commotion, comes over and explains that they have to remove a bunch of stuff to access the suspension to test what components are bad. OK, so that makes some sense. Maybe not $500 worth of sense because that's still 10 hours at $50 an hour, but whatever.

I won't say what it ended up costing to fix. But safe to say if something happens to it again, I won't be taking it to the dealer to be fixed.