My wife's brand-new 2005 Town Car has an integrated... - Skylaw
My wife's brand-new 2005 Town Car has an integrated Nav/THX sound/6-disc CD changer. The CD changer ate a disc, requiring replacement of entire unit. After the initial problem, the car was returned with LCD screen down - Nav & radio could not be used. I moved the LCD back into place to enable these features for the 3 weeks we were told to expect for the replacement system to arrive. My wife kept calling after expected delivery date of parts and was told repeatedly they were not in. At the 6th week, she was told the replacement unit had come in 3 weeks before. After the 2d appointment, the car was returned with the service invoice annotated "replaced and tested" and the eaten CD on the floor. The unit was not replaced at all - marks that had been on the changer face were still present. The changer would accept and eject CDs but would not read any of them - so much for "testing." On 3rd trip, my wife was told Cherner would install a new unit the next day - undoubtedly the one that should have been installed in the first place. The mechanic tried to blame problem on home - burned discs. Not so, all were commercial. When the unit was in fact replaced, all worked fine. I have many suspicions about an invoice that says plainly that an expensive ($3000 option) unit was replaced and tested, when it was very obviously not.
The car has an automatic trunk opener/closer. Soon after purchase, the trunk closer SLAMMED immediately after opening fully, hitting my wife's hand hard. Injury was not major, fortunately, but the trunk slammed hard enough to have taken a limb off or cause serious head injury. It shook the whole car, and bounced it on the suspension. The problem repeated every time the trunk was opened after first time it occurred. The cause was a torsion bar in the trunk mechanism that had become dislodged. Cherner's response: Don't put anything on the raised shelf in the trunk. It could happen again. Before the repair, I made a video of the trunk slamming 5 times in a row as soon as it fully opened, and hand-delivered it to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, together with a complaint. It's a safety problem of great concern, and "don't put anything on the shelf" is all Cherner can say.
Dealer-installed wheel well mouldings were not installed properly. One came off even before the car was delivered to my wife. On the last trip (for the nav system problem) it came off again and was destroyed in the dealership's car wash. The work is just sloppy and it is not checked adequately. Terrible quality control.
One "service" manager became extremely rude to my wife; she refuses to deal with him any more. The second manager has been an improvement, but the work in the maintenance bays is still awful.
We are looking for another dealer in the Arlington VA area; we have never had such bad dealings from any other L-M dealer in other cities (Tampa, FL, Sacramento, CA and Baltimore, MD). Most have been super. Not these guys.
Lack of cooperation or followup was evident even at purchase - it was a painful experience. Even at the front end, these guys don't know how to do business. We had our own financing, and it was a straight-cash deal - no trade. Price was fine ("employee" discount), but the delay tactics, unnecessary delays in getting the car out the door as my wife wanted it, and even the inability to get the sales people to credit the cost of the unused standard wheels against the cost of the upgraded wheels (which they insisted in selling at full retail) was a trial - although they did it after an hour of haggling and waiting. Although we found our car 10 minutes after coming onto the lot, it took four hours to complete the transaction on a straight cash deal!! Not a service problem, but part of a dealership problem - these guys just don't care about doing business or taking care of customers.
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