Re: Dealer Experience (BAD) (archive)

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Your Dealer seems to have the same POS attitude mine has about things. My car a 99 M Roadster (10/98) had a dead battery a couple of months ago and the Dealer had ME call to roadside assistance and get the tow truck to pick it up then kept the car overnight to charge that battery for testing at which point they did tell me it was bad (but I already knew it was bad)

Since then I have had to take the car back for repair of the fuel sensor (waited 2 days to get the car in) but all they did was reprogram the cluster and I still have the same problems ! My next visit to the dealer will be on 4-6-00 at which time I hope to get the 2 open problems I have closed.

: Took my car to the local Annapolis, MD dealer (March 98 MZ3 and first time for any warranty work other that oil changes) due to the battery being dead each morning requiring a jump start. The dealer could find nothing wrong. I watched the tech work on it. First thing he did was open the hood, which I thought was kinda strange considering the battery is in the truck.

: A few minutes later the service guy came to me, informing me that they could find nothing wrong. He asked if I kept my Valentine radar detector on overnight, which I never do. I told him that I had checked the battery in the morning with a voltmeter and found it to read 12.0 volts. I thought this was kinda low, should be around 12.6 volts or so. He then went out to the service tech, who connected a voltmeter to the battery (this was the first time the trunk was opened).

: A few minutes later the service guy came back to me and said they had performed a load check on the battery and monitored the battery drain. Still they could find nothing wrong, and refused to replace the battery because "BMW would not pay for it unless they could find something wrong".

: At that point I was getting a little upset. I then asked the service guy what a new battery would cost, and he told me about $200 installed. He refused to install the battery without labor charge. I thought that was very expensive for a 10 minute job, as the battery costs $115.

: The next morning the battery was dead again. I then went to the dealership and got a battery and installed it my self. The car now starts.

: My question is:
: Can they tell everything about a batteries condition from under the hood with their gyzmo? They certainly didn't do anything else. They didn't even check the batteries water level.

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