Car Dealer Service Departments

Creeper said:

Keeping you updated on my SAGA, but really just venting, here is another update from my dealer service department today.

They have determined what the problem is with my air suspension system. It turns out that the air suspension compressor and the front left "air strut" (what he called it) are bad and need to be replaced. I believe what he called a strut is really the shock absorber and air bladder. In any case, they want $5300 to fix it! This is a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 84,000 miles on it. That's $5300 on top of the $1400 they are charging me for the rear brakes (without replacing the rotors!).

Needless to say I told them to pound sand and I will drive the car with the warning light on. I may take it to a local mechanic and see if they will do the same work for less. I looked up the parts at the official Mopar parts site and new parts are about $1400. I can get a rebuilt compressor for about $330 bucks reducing the cost of parts to about $1000.

Or I can drive it as is, or just sell it as is and get a few thousand for it. It is actually in very good condition other than this one problem. All the brakes are less than a year old. The water pump and exhaust system are a year old. Now body damage and the interior is in excellent shape, or will be if I vacuum the rugs.

Clearly if I intend to drive any distance I will need to find something else.

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Creeper said:

Keeping you updated on my SAGA, but really just venting, here is another update from my dealer service department today.

They have determined what the problem is with my air suspension system. It turns out that the air suspension compressor and the front left "air strut" (what he called it) are bad and need to be replaced. I believe what he called a strut is really the shock absorber and air bladder. In any case, they want $5300 to fix it! This is a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 84,000 miles on it. That's $5300 on top of the $1400 they are charging me for the rear brakes (without replacing the rotors!).

Needless to say I told them to pound sand and I will drive the car with the warning light on. I may take it to a local mechanic and see if they will do the same work for less. I looked up the parts at the official Mopar parts site and new parts are about $1400. I can get a rebuilt compressor for about $330 bucks reducing the cost of parts to about $1000.

Or I can drive it as is, or just sell it as is and get a few thousand for it. It is actually in very good condition other than this one problem. All the brakes are less than a year old. The water pump and exhaust system are a year old. Now body damage and the interior is in excellent shape, or will be if I vacuum the rugs.

Clearly if I intend to drive any distance I will need to find something else.

Click to expand...

Creeper said:

Keeping you updated on my SAGA, but really just venting, here is another update from my dealer service department today.

They have determined what the problem is with my air suspension system. It turns out that the air suspension compressor and the front left "air strut" (what he called it) are bad and need to be replaced. I believe what he called a strut is really the shock absorber and air bladder. In any case, they want $5300 to fix it! This is a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 84,000 miles on it. That's $5300 on top of the $1400 they are charging me for the rear brakes (without replacing the rotors!).

Needless to say I told them to pound sand and I will drive the car with the warning light on. I may take it to a local mechanic and see if they will do the same work for less. I looked up the parts at the official Mopar parts site and new parts are about $1400. I can get a rebuilt compressor for about $330 bucks reducing the cost of parts to about $1000.

Or I can drive it as is, or just sell it as is and get a few thousand for it. It is actually in very good condition other than this one problem. All the brakes are less than a year old. The water pump and exhaust system are a year old. Now body damage and the interior is in excellent shape, or will be if I vacuum the rugs.

Clearly if I intend to drive any distance I will need to find something else.

Click to expand...

Creeper said:

Keeping you updated on my SAGA, but really just venting, here is another update from my dealer service department today.

They have determined what the problem is with my air suspension system. It turns out that the air suspension compressor and the front left "air strut" (what he called it) are bad and need to be replaced. I believe what he called a strut is really the shock absorber and air bladder. In any case, they want $5300 to fix it! This is a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 84,000 miles on it. That's $5300 on top of the $1400 they are charging me for the rear brakes (without replacing the rotors!).

Needless to say I told them to pound sand and I will drive the car with the warning light on. I may take it to a local mechanic and see if they will do the same work for less. I looked up the parts at the official Mopar parts site and new parts are about $1400. I can get a rebuilt compressor for about $330 bucks reducing the cost of parts to about $1000.

Or I can drive it as is, or just sell it as is and get a few thousand for it. It is actually in very good condition other than this one problem. All the brakes are less than a year old. The water pump and exhaust system are a year old. Now body damage and the interior is in excellent shape, or will be if I vacuum the rugs.

Clearly if I intend to drive any distance I will need to find something else.

Click to expand...

John813 said:

Yea, cancel the service for rear brakes. Go to an independent shop and if they say the same high number trade it in

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terra said:

That is an obscene amount for rear brakes. It should be more like $300 at most. And that would be with REPLACING rotors which would be about $100 in parts. Remember that dealers now routinely charge $150 or more per hour in labor.

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Crazed Liotta Eyes said:

If you don't want to deal with it any more, I'd suggest taking it to a Carmax and selling it there because I think you'll be surprised how much they will give you for it. Fill out the form on their website and they will immediately give you an offer. Then when you go in, they will briefly look at the vehicle and close the deal. I just sold our 2010 Dodge Journey there and was stunned when they gave me 5800 for it. It needed new shocks, new tires and was overheating. Also had body damage from me backing into a telephone pole. The rear gate wouldn't even latch and it probably would have been several thousand dollars to fix. I would have taken 2K for it with the condition it was in.

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Creeper said:

The rear brakes included the parking breaks and new ABS tuner sprockets. But yes, it is highway robbery. New rotors, top of the line, with pads, can be had for $200 or a bit more. I have done brakes on my cars in the past. It is not that hard to do if you have decent tools. But I didn't take my car in for brakes!

I know I was robbed, and would be robbed further if I agreed to have them do the air suspension system. I called local guy who says he can fix it for a lot les so I will bring it to him as soon as I get the car back and see how much he wants.

If it's a big job I will just sell it as is.

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CalPolyTechnique said:

$1,400 for rear brakes sounds absurd.

I wouldn’t put any more money into it other than what’s needed to keep you safe and prevent you from being a hazard on the road.

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Mannix said:

Weirdest thing ever....back in June 2018, my wife and I bought a new Toyota Highlander from a dealership in the Dallas area....they never once then or still now have mentioned purchasing a warranty of any kind. ??? Do Toyota dealerships not push that?? When we bought a used Ford Escape and a new Chevy Silverado, we almost didn't purchase they bothered us so much....especially the Ford dealership in Richardson.

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Creeper said:

I had to post an update to this saga. After telling the dealer not to fix my air suspension system for $5300.00 I took my Jeep to a couple of other local mechanic shops. One told me if the compressor is bad it will be $3800 to fix it. He did not seem interested in doing the work, which after watching some youtube videos, I can understand why. It is a nightmare of a job that requires removing the entire front right side wheel assembly.

But when I was talking to the second mechanic, I mentioned the car actually rides fine. He asked, "It's not bouncy and bumpy?" It is not. It actually sits level and rides like it always did, it just does not go up and down the way it used to. He replied, then "I don't think it is the compressor or a leak in the system" (which is what Jeep told me was the problem). He told me to bring the car around next Tuesday and he would look at it. But this got me thinking. If the airbags are bad or the compressor has failed then why isn't the car drooping somewhere? And why isn't it bouncing or riding hard over bumps? I started doing some research and located a fuse and a relay associated with the air suspension system. First I checked the fuse. 20 seconds to pull it and see it was blown (the Jeep fuse box is very accessible under the hood), but this alone does not mean the compressor did not fry itself out. I replaced the $5.00 fuse and the air suspension works fine again. The air lift is a bit confused at times, it takes a few seconds to find the right height and level, but the compressor is clearly lifting the car up and lowering it without any more warning messages. Its been 3 days so far. Again, this does not mean the fuse will not blow again as it did the first time. Something made it fail and that something might occur again. I think I need to replace the relay as well because the relay is responsible for directing the current to the compressor. If the relay goes bad, that could have caused the compressor to act erratically and the fuse to blow. Unfortunately, the relay for a 2011 Jeep is no longer manufactured. There is a suitable replacement but it is a special order. I should have it next week so we'll see how it goes.

But just think, the dealer was going to charge me $5300 to replace the compressor and valves and the problem is the fuse ($5) and maybe the relay ($15). Both and can be changed under the hood in the fuse box. I imagine they would have replaced the parts only to find out that didn't work. Then they would have eventually found and changed the fuse and not mentioned to me that was actually the problem.

Incompetence. Now I will resume my plan to drive my Jeep until it dies. Hopefully not until car prices come down a little.

Click to expand...

Creeper said:

I had to post an update to this saga. After telling the dealer not to fix my air suspension system for $5300.00 I took my Jeep to a couple of other local mechanic shops. One told me if the compressor is bad it will be $3800 to fix it. He did not seem interested in doing the work, which after watching some youtube videos, I can understand why. It is a nightmare of a job that requires removing the entire front right side wheel assembly.

But when I was talking to the second mechanic, I mentioned the car actually rides fine. He asked, "It's not bouncy and bumpy?" It is not. It actually sits level and rides like it always did, it just does not go up and down the way it used to. He replied, then "I don't think it is the compressor or a leak in the system" (which is what Jeep told me was the problem). He told me to bring the car around next Tuesday and he would look at it. But this got me thinking. If the airbags are bad or the compressor has failed then why isn't the car drooping somewhere? And why isn't it bouncing or riding hard over bumps? I started doing some research and located a fuse and a relay associated with the air suspension system. First I checked the fuse. 20 seconds to pull it and see it was blown (the Jeep fuse box is very accessible under the hood), but this alone does not mean the compressor did not fry itself out. I replaced the $5.00 fuse and the air suspension works fine again. The air lift is a bit confused at times, it takes a few seconds to find the right height and level, but the compressor is clearly lifting the car up and lowering it without any more warning messages. Its been 3 days so far. Again, this does not mean the fuse will not blow again as it did the first time. Something made it fail and that something might occur again. I think I need to replace the relay as well because the relay is responsible for directing the current to the compressor. If the relay goes bad, that could have caused the compressor to act erratically and the fuse to blow. Unfortunately, the relay for a 2011 Jeep is no longer manufactured. There is a suitable replacement but it is a special order. I should have it next week so we'll see how it goes.

But just think, the dealer was going to charge me $5300 to replace the compressor and valves and the problem is the fuse ($5) and maybe the relay ($15). Both and can be changed under the hood in the fuse box. I imagine they would have replaced the parts only to find out that didn't work. Then they would have eventually found and changed the fuse and not mentioned to me that was actually the problem.

Incompetence. Now I will resume my plan to drive my Jeep until it dies. Hopefully not until car prices come down a little.

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Crazed Liotta Eyes said:

That's awesome man! I love hearing a story about a dealership not getting to screw somebody. I hope your fix works out.

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Creeper said:

Me too. I wish it was me who wasn't screwed. I just finished penning a letter to Jeep about my 3 most recent experiences with this dealer. Each time I took the car into their service department, the found something wrong with the far totally unrelated to the problem I too the car in for. I took the car in for a recall due to bad wiring in the vanity mirror. Somehow that turned out to be $1700 for brakes and an assortment of other problems.

When a lift gate piston failed and I took it to them, the charged me $2800, $700 for the lift gate! The rest was an assortment of brakes, oil leaks, thermostat, blah, blah, blah. And when I got the car back the lift gate was so far out of alignment the auto functions did not work properly. The dealer told me to take it to a body shop to get it straightened out! So, yeah, I was screwed plenty by Jeep.

All of this is my fault. I was too lax dealing with them. But I am forever tainted against Jeep now and I let them know it in my little love letter. I am still in the market for a new car and if this problem is fixed, cross my fingers, my car went up in value by about $3000.

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SlammedZero said:

That dealership definitely sounds shady. They fix your rear lift gate, it comes back to you unaligned, and suddenly that's now your problem to take to a body shop? Wow.

Of course, I'm sure all dealerships are shady. One reason they've all earned that "stealership" moniker. I have a little issue with my truck happening that is going to require the dealership, warranty work on their warranty work lol, and I can't wait to see what comes of this (heck, I can't even get in touch with them. Called several times the other day and left a message with no results. What's the point of having a service department).

These dealerships are starting to get out of hand with their greed though. Was reading the other day that, starting with Ford, that these auto manufacturers are starting to come down on theses dealership's "unreasonable" markups. A particular vehicle will come out at, say $60k MSRP, and the dealership will throw them out on their lot for $90k, or more, depending on how popular the model is. It's ridiculous. They're only about that bottom-line and couldn't-care-less about customer service.

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