I recommend documenting your vehicle and mileage yourself. My daughter dropped her one year old car in 2007 off at the dealer for a sensor replacement under warranty, 7 days later they called and said your car is ready so my daughter went to pick up her car and it had an additional 451 miles on the odometer. The dealer denied everything even though the service writer wrote down the mileage on the service ticket and my daughter verified the mileage herself. Through my own investigation I found out the mechanics wife was arrested in there only car in Georgia for or a DUI during that 7 days which is about a 451 mile round trip. I requested their parking lot camera footage and they said unfortunately there cameras aren’t working at the moment. I called the local police department and they said I could come down and file a report but it would never go anywhere because that dealership is a town legacy. I couldn’t afford an attorney and I ended up getting no satisfaction because the owner himself called me and said his service department would never do such a thing, his TV commercials even says he’s the most honest dealer around so he has to be telling the truth right? Hum seems I got a bit off topic! I guess I’m still feeling that sting.
I know that well! About 20 years ago I had a rather rare car in Germany, a Ford Mondeo ST220. A lovely car, 226hp from a 3.0
Liter V6 engine, a beautiful sedan.
But very rarely, since most people here drive BMWs, Audis and Mercedes. Decadent as the German is. I immediately liked the Ford and it was affordable too, many thousands of bucks cheaper than German brands, but better equipped, prettier, more reliable and with more character.
I'm very picky when it comes to my cars, despite children, dog and family, I pay a lot of attention to cleanliness, inside and out. That's why I immediately notice when something is wrong. I had to take the car for a recall at the time, the power steering line could break and this has resulted in some serious fires. When I got the car back I had 100 miles more on the odometer, the front and rear floor mats were full of dirty big footprints, the door sills were covered with mud. I also had stone chips in the paint on the bonnet and the average consumption in the on-board computer showed 18.4 liters. Normally I drove the part with 8.5!
I was about to run amok! And I don't get it when it's a joke! But I wasn't quite that stupid, grabbed a mechanic who didn't know me and said "hey, that's a great car there, isn't it? I'd also like to drive it". He then said.."haaa, this thing works like hell! My colleagues and I drove the thing onto the freeway after work! I'll tell you, we had fun, the thing runs at 250 km/h and when you do it turning red...what a sound".
He wasn't so relaxed when I grabbed the guy and said he should now show me exactly who it was and name the colleagues! And then, of course, out of fear for their job, they told me "Yes, wait a minute...the salesman let two customers test drive it because there is practically nowhere else to try a car like this!"
I grabbed the salesman and the drink on the table wasn't the only thing I threw in his face!
The cool thing was, no one acted guilty in any way! As if that were normal, I shouldn't get so upset. The damage to the paintwork would definitely not be repaired, the engine would be able to cope if you constantly drove it into the red zone and anyway, what do I even want?!
Well, I had to settle the whole thing with a lawyer, I even placed ads in the newspaper about how the customers' cars were treated there and at night I stuck posters on the dealership with warnings!
Today it would be easier, but back then we didn't have smartphones and social networks!
