Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  03/04/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My wife went to get an oil change and was "up sold" to getting a coolant flush and other unneeded services. Per the owners manual, a coolant flush is recommended at 150k miles or 10 years. My vehicle is 6 years old and has 60k miles. This dealer is price gouging and this needs to be addressed. I spoke to **** from Roanoke Motors and he explained that their dealer recommends a coolant flush at 60k miles because of weather conditions. If that is the case, the OEM would be suggesting this. My photo shows the owners manuals recommended coolant change. I'd also like to understand if the brake flush was actually necessary as well or if this is another price gouging situation.

  Business response

  03/18/2024

  We recommend maitenance based on two things, what the manufacturer suggests and based on what we see as failure points on vehicles to prevent repairs. It is always less expensive for the customer to do maintenance then to pay for a repair. They've owned their Pacifica for over 6 years and neither the coolant or the brake fluid have been touched, so both of those were recommended and accepted by the customer for us to do along with replacing their battery which we got covered under warranty. We recommend the coolant flush because we've seen contaminants in coolant when it's been a vehicle that long and it can cause heater core issues. The brake flush we recommend every 2-3 years and this can be found on the internet to verify and their's wasn't ever done in over 6 years. We want a safety item like brakes to function like you expect in an emergency braking situation, so we want the fluid to be in a condition to do so. Once the customer got home he was very upset that his wife approved these repairs and called the dealership. I talked to him and he didn't like my explanation, which is in this paragraph and then slandered us in his post with the BBB. I did send them a check for the amount he spent for those two items. This was a first for me to have someone so upset about a maintenance item to keep their vehicle performing. I will be glad to talk further over the phone or anything the customer would like. Thank you. 

  Customer response

  03/19/2024

   I am rejecting this response because:

  While I do appreciate the refund, I do not appreciate your response.  If you’re going to recommend a service that’s nearly twice as early as the OEM’s owner’s manual, you should have documented proof of your claim, so can you please provide?  A corner case of one incident is not sufficient.  Also, can you get a written response from Chrysler that your recommended coolant interval is reasonable?

  I’d like to ensure that future customers are not paying for services that are not needed.
  
  

  
  

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