Dashcam ftw; Audi of Richmond mechanic caught not doing a full service...

[originalhypa]

Originally Posted by Eff-1

so did you win the case?

I just wish that story ended with him karate chopping the prick GM in the throat while the elevator was moving.

That's almost worth $3k in itself.

[hud 91gt]

I think most lawyers will do that to intimidate you. I was in court for a seatbelt ticket, I was approached by their lawyer (Prosecutor maybe?), saying that I have no case, and will loose. I may as well plead guilty and may escape with a reduced fine..

5 hours later, I walk out ticket free, and they wasted their afternoon trying to fry my ass. Assholes.

[ws6ta]

Originally Posted by parm104

I've been in a legal battle with this exact same dealership before...GM of Cowell Auto Group likes to intimidate his customers by using legal action whether he has reasonable grounds or not.

At my preliminary hearing, the GM waited for me in the lobby so he could get into the elevator with me alone. In the elevator he told me that I was going to lose and that I didn't know what I was getting myself into. He continued to tell me how great his legal team is and how I obviously don't know what I'm doing because I didn't have legal aid with me. He tried to get me to settle in the elevator and continued to tell me that this case was going to ruin my life...

Just so we're clear, this was a small claims issue dealing with about $3000 at most. I had been a customer for 8 years with these guys at this time and had already purchased 2 cars from them. Was in the process to get a third when this situation was raised.

They only care about #1 and that's themselves. Reputation, customer loyalty, consumer ethics are totally irrelevant to them.

who is the gm? what was your 3k claim about?

[GLOW]

Originally Posted by parm104

At my preliminary hearing, the GM waited for me in the lobby so he could get into the elevator with me alone. In the elevator he told me that I was going to lose and that I didn't know what I was getting myself into. He continued to tell me how great his legal team is and how I obviously don't know what I'm doing because I didn't have legal aid with me. He tried to get me to settle in the elevator and continued to tell me that this case was going to ruin my life...

i seriously hope you won your case and all the while he's talking trash to you..you had a stone cold look on your face like this...

[spyker]

Originally Posted by parm104

I've been in a legal battle with this exact same dealership before...GM of Cowell Auto Group likes to intimidate his customers by using legal action whether he has reasonable grounds or not.

At my preliminary hearing, the GM waited for me in the lobby so he could get into the elevator with me alone. In the elevator he told me that I was going to lose and that I didn't know what I was getting myself into. He continued to tell me how great his legal team is and how I obviously don't know what I'm doing because I didn't have legal aid with me. He tried to get me to settle in the elevator and continued to tell me that this case was going to ruin my life...

Just so we're clear, this was a small claims issue dealing with about $3000 at most. I had been a customer for 8 years with these guys at this time and had already purchased 2 cars from them. Was in the process to get a third when this situation was raised.

They only care about #1 and that's themselves. Reputation, customer loyalty, consumer ethics are totally irrelevant to them.

If this happened to me,I would immediately look for a sheriff and tell him/her that I was just threatened and intimidated in the elevator by the person I'm persuing litigation with.He would have been arrested on the spot for that shit.

Why did you not just tell the guy to STFU and don't talk to you.Shit I would have started to scream my head off yelling & running for help the second the elevator door opened just to draw attention from people.

Who's life would be ruined now?

[spyker]

Originally Posted by hud 91gt

I think most lawyers will do that to intimidate you. I was in court for a seatbelt ticket, I was approached by their lawyer (Prosecutor maybe?), saying that I have no case, and will loose. I may as well plead guilty and may escape with a reduced fine..

5 hours later, I walk out ticket free, and they wasted their afternoon trying to fry my ass. Assholes.

Alot of people don't realize the judge is the one who determines ones fate and has the final say.lawyers,prosecutors & cops will tell you what might happen just to scare you into giving in and make their jobs easier,but it's the judge who makes the final decision,not them.

[Calbeee]

the problem here is that he made a claim that "AudiCare" is useless, and that is not just a dealership issue after that

[ilvtofu]

They can sue for defamation/libel if someone calls their product useless, but only if it isn't true and poster was spreading lies.
IMO the statements made were based on fact and he is legally entitled to an opinion based off of those facts.
It would be a valid claim to say that a product or service is useless/a waste of money if it does not deliver what it's supposed to. If they promise an XXX point inspection and the car isn't even raised to be inspected then they did not deliver on this service. Furthermore the statement is reinforced by the floor manager who agrees that the service was inadequate and tries to make it right.

[parm104]

Originally Posted by spyker

If this happened to me,I would immediately look for a sheriff and tell him/her that I was just threatened and intimidated in the elevator by the person I'm persuing litigation with.He would have been arrested on the spot for that shit.

Why did you not just tell the guy to STFU and don't talk to you.Shit I would have started to scream my head off yelling & running for help the second the elevator door opened just to draw attention from people.

Who's life would be ruined now?

Originally Posted by GLOW

i seriously hope you won your case and all the while he's talking trash to you..you had a stone cold look on your face like this...

Originally Posted by ws6ta

who is the gm? what was your 3k claim about?

Forgot to check back on this thread...

Anyways, the claim was a damages claim set forth against me. Long story short, I had gone in to do a vehicle trade-in. My salesman and myself went on a test-drive for the vehicle I wanted. About 6 minutes (if that) of the drive, the car started acting up and wouldn't go past 2nd gear. We brought the car back to the dealership and the salesman kept repeating how sorry he was that it happened and that of course they will take care of the problems before selling me that car. I went home and that same weekend I called and told them I wasn't interested in that SPECIFIC car because of the problems we experienced on the test drive.

A few days later, I get a phone call from the GM (his name was Jim) and he said word for word "so when are you coming back in?" I told him I wasn't sure yet, I'm still shopping. He then says "Well whether you're still shopping or not, I need you to come settle this bill and pay for the parts that you damaged."

Of course that conversation didn't get very far and a few weeks later he decided to come to MY HOUSE, IN PERSON and serve with papers.

A year later their case was thrown out of court and I dropped my countersuit.

And the reason why I didn't take action during that elevator scenario was because I was in control of my situation and knew what my outcome was to be. I was already losing money simply by being at that preliminary hearing and wanted to waste no more time that was necessary. I also didn't want to give away my position as I was acting as my own legal aid. He thought I was an amateur rookie kid all the while I was a law student at the time knew EXACTLY what I was doing; more so than he did. In the end, I won but they stuck it to me down the road by making me pay $400 for a bogus warranty claim to erase a check engine light. I'm certain that was retaliation for them losing their case.

[mr_chin]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Wouldn't the filming of technicians on private property without prior consent at the very least violate the terms of service of the dealership?

While you can't deny what happened in the video, I would be very surprised if the dealership hasn't gotten their lawyers involved.
Posted via RS Mobile

I believe a lot of dealership don't have such terms listed on their terms of service. They may refuse future services if they find that your car has a camera rolling, but if filming without consent is not on their terms of service, then they can't take legal actions. Even if it is in the terms of service, they must show you beforehand prior to taking legal actions.

No signs prohibiting filming, or you were not notifying before services were performed, then you have every right to film. There is no law saying that you must notify anyone on private property before filming. If they catch you filming without their consent, the least they can do is force you to leave their property. Unless the dealership has a privacy policy posted in an area accessible by customers to go through, and on it states that filming without consent is not allowed.

[!SG]

paper work. you can always request to see the check sheet of any service done your vehicle. at the same time, the technician is transferring notes over, or writting their notes on the electronic system. then work order has to be finished, service advisor transfer their notes on, and the whole work order has to be gone over to make sure everything is billed out correctly. a service advisor may have up to 50 on going work orders, and anywhere from 10-15 appointments that day. if they cant get to you within 30mins, understand why.

your car may be finished, but your work order/invoice/bill may not.

Originally Posted by StylinRed

when i got my 25k inspection i felt that i may have gotten the same treatment since i saw my car parked outside already about 30mins before i was told they were done

made a point to note that to the service manager but they insisted that everything was done and they were just too busy and wasn't able to tell me i could leave

nothing much i could do though except not go back

[!SG]

the least they could have done is either redo the service, or offer it at a discounted rate if they didnt do the full service.

Originally Posted by parm104

Saw this on 'Zine...appalling but rather standard practice these days I think. This is really the only reason why I'd want to get a cam in my car is to monitor people who are working on my car and who are expected to provide a certain service...ESPECIALLY people who bill by the hour...

I just left OpenRoad a month ago, brought my car in for maintenance and told them I'm going on a road trip and would like fluids topped off. They told me they did all the work, turns out they never swapped out the defective iPod cable like they claimed, Richmond confirmed that it was my original cable and still defective...my warning lights went off for low oil level and low windshield washer fluid levels...so obviously they didn't top off fluids either...any they left their tools in my back seat lol.

When confronted about the issue, they sort of laughed off and never apologized or owned up to it. Simply said "well we did what we had to do."

It's especially an issue for AudiCare customers because we pay an extra premium so we can receive extended coverage. It's like a contract essentially and I am locked in to receive service from Audi dealerships. If I don't like the service Audi is providing, I can't go elsewhere now because I've already paid for the Care package. On the contrary, if you go to a local shop like RPI and I'm not happy with their service, I can always get different service from another shop around the area.

I do find it somewhat interesting that most of these Blackbox videos that are appearing locally here are generally from reps or friends of reps who work for the company. And they also started to spur up in our local community at the same time ASR and BlackVue did...hmmmm...People have been using goPro's in their cars and other dash cams for years now and we never got this many videos up or these extreme of cases...Usually just a car crash here and there or a douche bag driver. All the BlackVue vids seem to be extreme cases of some sort of car issue...

[!SG]

request the qc check list. most require numbers and measurements to be written down.

Originally Posted by ilvtofu

They can sue for defamation/libel if someone calls their product useless, but only if it isn't true and poster was spreading lies.
IMO the statements made were based on fact and he is legally entitled to an opinion based off of those facts.
It would be a valid claim to say that a product or service is useless/a waste of money if it does not deliver what it's supposed to. If they promise an XXX point inspection and the car isn't even raised to be inspected then they did not deliver on this service. Furthermore the statement is reinforced by the floor manager who agrees that the service was inadequate and tries to make it right.

[CTS Turbo]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

wtf...you'd expect this at your private mechanic...but at stealership prices it must be frustrating

If a private shop did this then they would most certainly never go back and lose a large number of customers compared to a dealer. If a dealer does this they may lose one customer and gain another 10 that day from new car sales.

Consumers don't realize their new Audi's, VW's, BMW's don't need to be serviced my a dealer. The vast majority of techs at dealers don't even drive the brand they work on. Go out back of BJ BMW and tell me what the techs drive.

As some of you may know dealer mechanics usually are paid on something called "Flat Rate", which means the dealer can actually bill out more time than the job actually takes. For example if the dealer normally charges 2 hours for a service/repair and it only takes 1 hour then guess who's getting paid 2 hours and guess what customer is paying for 2 hours of work that took 1 hour.

Now when you're doing a major service that for the most part only involves checking things that turn out to be fine don't you think that the vast majority of guys at dealers are going to "burn through" a service to get paid, and move onto the next job? Most people would prefer to get paid 14 hours for working 8 hours in actuality. Something to keep in mind when you're taking your car to the dealer for that expensive service....

[accordpoop]

Originally Posted by CTS Turbo

As some of you may know dealer mechanics usually are paid on something called "Flat Rate", which means the dealer can actually bill out more time than the job actually takes. For example if the dealer normally charges 2 hours for a service/repair and it only takes 1 hour then guess who's getting paid 2 hours and guess what customer is paying for 2 hours of work that took 1 hour.

Most dealers go by what warranty will pay for a certain job. For example...tech gets paid 1.5hrs to change a wheel bearing and some techs will take the full 1.5hrs to finish the job, but some techs will take 1hr to finish the same exact job. Doesn't mean the second tech is ripping off the customer, just means he knows how to do a job faster than others. So if a dealership is charging x amount for a job then there's a reason for it.

Not all dealerships are bad, it just takes 1 bad apple to ruin the bunch.