On a Tuesday, I had a dissatisfying experience with my car dealer. The following Thursday, I had lunch with J.D. Power's VP in charge of satisfaction. And Thursday night, the dealer's survey company called (coincidentally, and not knowing about my lunch with the Power exec) to ask about my service satisfaction. Even more kismet: Now I get to write this column. Life is good--for me.
On behalf of everyone who's annoyed by all the glitches affecting the cars we love and the dealers we deal with, this column's for you. Here's what I hate about cars this month. This will not be the last column on the topic. And on the off chance you've had similar experiences, please share them on this thread or e-mail technoride@ziffdavis.com (no e-mail, please, from impoverished offspring of Nigerian trade ministers who need a Good Samaritan to free their bank accounts).
Owner sites suck. Go to a car manufacturer's site, and the configure-your-next-car section works wonderfully, because they still want your money. But buy the car and log on to the owner section, and you've fallen into the dark ages of Web craftsmanship. Mostly owner sections are about selling you parts and logo-wear, along with credit card offers and financing deals, or the company's rock concert/charity walk/Olympic branding campaign. Maybe you can download the owner manual as a PDF, but you can't get the nav-system manual, warranty manual, or tire-warranty manual (what for? I don't think tires ever get replaced free).
You many see a space for service records, but that means you enter the info yourself, by hand. Perish the thought that the dealer network could transfer its records for you. Try to look up the recommended maintenance schedule: Even if you've previously entered your car's model, year, and VIN number, many sites will greet you with drop-down boxes asking for your car's year and model. You'll also find handy tech tips such as, "Be sure to check your tire pressure frequently."
Maybe-on, maybe-not icons. If you have an LCD panel for nav/audio/HVAC and try to set an option, the option in question turns from yellow to blue, or "Driver" displays blue on white while "Passenger" turns to white on blue. Does that mean driver-side functions are enabled or disabled? How about a highlight that makes sense, such as a hollow box with a check mark when it's enabled? (Same thing with portable cell-phone battery indicators: Does one bar light, three bars dark mean you have more or less than half charge remaining?)
Records access charge. When my car goes in for service ($90 an hour for shop time), the dealership tacks on a 50-cent records maintenance fee to look things up in the computer.
Not-in-inventory penalty. Many cars have high-failure parts. In ours, it's a sliding-door electrical module. (On the previous car, it was everything underneath the oil filler cap.) Our dealer doesn't stock the part, though it should. It's not going to gather much warehouse dust before someone needs it.
When our service rep called to declare that fixing the sticking door wasn't an adjustment this time, but that we needed to replace the whole part, our choices were: a) make a second appointment when the part arrives by truck in, oh, a week; b) pay $25 to have a small $100 module overnighted; or c) Un-garage the spare Bentley, even though it's still rainy season. Some automakers have enough regional warehouses so that any part can be trucked overnight, gratis. Not this maker. My expectation from ordering tech stuff and books online is that providing next-day parts should be a cost of doing business for the automaker/dealer, or at most a $5 charge for me. It's definitely the cost of my satisfaction. Continued...
CSI payola. That's customer satisfaction index, although what some dealers do is a crime. When we got the "how was your service?" phone call from the survey company, we were midway through the repair mentioned above, in which parts would arrive in a week, and we laid out what made us unhappy with the service process.
My expectations had been adjusted upward, because I'd had that lunch with Power & Associates' Chris Denove the day before. He had talked about how one automaker--my brand, come to think of it--found the quartile of dealerships with highest profits was the quartile with the highest long-term satisfaction. (Note that Power makes good money proving the obvious through surveys.)
We told the CSI pollster we weren't satisfied. The pollster notified the dealer (standard procedure, not special for us). The service rep called us and said, "The labor charge ($135) will be free--but not the part, since you had to pay for that in advance--if you give us a perfect rating when you get the long-form satisfaction e-mail survey." We allowed as how we'd already filled out the form online. The free-repair offer was rescinded. Later it was reinstated, but last I heard, the dealership wanted to dock the service rep for the make-good costs. As if he set the dealership rules.
Laff-a-minute parts charges. We misplaced our owner's manual. It's not a PDF at happy-owners-online.com, but you can order it. The manufacturer wanted $29, delivery time whenever. Amazon can custom-print most low-volume books and deliver in 2 to 3 days, for half that price.
The English-speaking penalty. The same owner's manual in Spanish was $27.
Oversize center brake lights. The hump on the back shelf reduces rear vision. Make it a tiny horizontal strip of LEDs in the shelf or the trunk lip instead.
Incandescent instrument bulbs. Every light in the instrument panel should be an LED. It costs a couple dollars more to build the car, but it saves buyers far more: The bulb in our car's clock cluster has failed four times now, and it's cost us about $60 a pop each time to repair it. At least that part's in stock.
Customer-paid maintenance. The majority of high-end cars are leased. Most people treat owned cars poorly and leased cars worse. If a car costs more than $35,000, free maintenance should be provided for the length of the warranty: oil changes, brake pads, wiper blades, air filters, everything but collision damage and tires. The car lasts longer, pollution is minimized, and the dealer gets back a higher-quality lease car to sell.
Abbreviated free maintenance. Our other car came with a full-maintenance plan. The car uses synthetic engine oil (a great technology that boosts mileage a bit; yours should use it, too). Around the time the free maintenance plan kicked in, the manufacturer discovered synthetic oil worked so well, it could go roughly twice as long between changes as it could the previous year, when owners paid dealers for oil changes.
Tiny, feel-alike steering-wheel buttons. Some buttons on steering wheels are helpful: Volume Up and Down, Music Next/Previous Program, Answer Phone, and Start Voice Input. But when wheel buttons number a dozen, and they're all small, that's a step backward. Buttons don't have to be buttons: Audi's steering-wheel volume control is a roller wheel. Smart idea.
Too-dim steering-wheel buttons. All those buttons need to be lighted at night, but on the majority of cars I've driven, they're markedly darker than the instrument cluster.
Overly bright nav display. Conversely, the nav panel often is too bright at night (except for night mode, which is too dim). There may need to be a three-way adjuster for instrument-cluster, steering-wheel, and nav-panel brightness, and it can't be buried three layers deep in the iDrive/COMAND/MMI menu structure.
Share your complaints. Unless, of course, you have a perfect car, a perfect dealer, and perfect reliability. Send e-mail to technoride@ziffdavis.com or comment below.
The 82nd 
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