Manufacturer Warranty or Not

[bowtieguy]

here in orlando, florida recently, a fleet owner of ford trucks attempted a warranty claim at the dealership of ALL his purchases. apparently the differential of one of his trucks bit the dust and was found to be EMPTY of gear lube. the claim was DENIED!

the vehicle was fairly new w/ not a great deal of miles, so the owner took it to another dealer w/ the same result. curious, the owner took it to a local independent shop(see the link in my signature), who is a consumer advocate in class action law suits against auto manufactures, to confirm the housing was NOT filled at the factory.

upon hearing this on the radio, a city of clermont ford dealership took ownership and intends on honoring the warranty request. this was after that dealership investigated and agreed the case was in fact not filled at the factory.

very disturbing and at the same time inspiring. perhaps this is why US auto makers are struggling. mistakes and problems happen, just FIX IT! prolly safe to say the original dealer lost its future sales in that guys fleet! at least someone stepped forward w/ integrity to resolve this foolishness.

not sure if i'd grant the clermont dealer my future purchases or not. i'd consider it tho, if i felt the motivation went beyond the almighty(or not so mighty) dollar.

[GasSavers_SD26]

Dealerships don't pay for warranty repairs for any manufacturer. The manufacturer does. So, if, for some reason, the manufacturer says it's not warrantable, taking it to another dealership should yield the same results. Each manufacturer has a computerized database of information that is accessible from dealership to dealership.

Obviously, something changed at the manufacturer level that would have paid the warranty claim. Think of the manufacturer as a customer to the dealership. If they won't authorize payment for the parts and labor, the work can't get done.

Yes, sometimes there are disagreements between manufacturers and dealers even. It isn't exclusive to any manufacturer.

You have a link to the story?

[bowtieguy]

sorry, no link as yet. as far as i know, this consumer contacted the magic mechanic directly to get possible help with this issue. larry perry is THE consumer's advocate when it comes to automotive issues. he's talked nationally about different manufacturer flaws and class action law suits.

makes sense about the manufacturer tho. afterall it was their mistake, so it should be their's to pay. maybe the third dealer decided to absorb the loss in hopes of getting publicity?

[GasSavers_SD26]

Publicity? Not sure. If we're talking a HD light duty truck, that's a good chunk of change to spread good will for a manufacture's defect, what a warranty is supposed to cover, not maintenance issues.

And trying to stab another franchised dealership with that would probably generate a huge amount of animosity in an arena where dealers buy parts from each other to reduce everyones overall inventory costs in addition to trading cars back and forth to meet customer needs.

An independent service center needs OEM parts too.

I'm sure there's more to the story. I worked on the service side, so I have some ideas of what customers claim, what manufacturers claim, and how even a service manager might try to drive his profit side.

I'll wait for you to post more info.

[kamesama980]

None of the dealers or manufacturers are going to bite the bullet till they have to...unless someone can show evidence that it was the factory that didn't fill it as opposed to it leaking out somewhere between there and the consumer. That's why warranties have clauses that if you take the car over xx speed, or even one tire off the road, etc etc etc bye bye warranty.

If you read close, he tried to get warranty work done on ALL his fleet because of ONE vehicle. depending on the size of his fleet, I can understand some hesitation because of that too.

All said and done though, if it can be shown that it wasn't filled from the factory, he wins. gotta give evidence of that though and that's the hard part. Without more info I can't say more than shoulda/woulda/coulda.