I had an incredibly frustrating and disappointing - kroytor
I had an incredibly frustrating and disappointing experience with the service department at Haddad.
On May 26, I brought in my leased vehicle (which has 26,505 miles and its lease ends this September) because it was making a strange noise whenever I pressed the accelerator. Crucially, when I dropped the car off, they did not perform any initial walkaround inspection of my vehicle. At the end of the day, they called to claim the noise was just the brakes and that they couldn't hear anything when accelerating. Since everyone who drives with me could hear it, I insisted on coming back the next morning to do a test drive with them.
The next morning, I drove with the Head of the Service Department. Of course, he heard the noise immediately and asked me to leave the car for another day. Later, they called again, still insisting it was a brake issue, quoting me $1,240 for OEM parts or $685 for aftermarket parts.
I declined the repair, picked up my car, and drove to a nearby store. When I got out, I was shocked to discover that my bumper had been cracked and damaged while in their care. I immediately returned to the dealership. The Head of Service had already left, but his assistant promised a call the next morning after checking their security cameras.
The next afternoon, the Head of Service called me while I was on my way to New York. He claimed their cameras showed I arrived with the damage—which is completely impossible. I told him I would be back in Massachusetts the following week and demanded to see the screenshots myself. He later claimed that no screenshots were saved, but still insisted I brought it in that way.
The real kicker: On June 1, I took my car to the Empire dealership in New Rochelle for a second opinion. The very next day, Empire diagnosed the true problem: the transmission was failing and needed to be completely replaced. I picked up my car from Empire on June 10, and it now runs perfectly with absolutely no noise. Haddad completely misdiagnosed a major, dangerous transmission issue as a standard brake job.
On June 17, I returned to Haddad to speak directly with the General Manager. I laid out the entire story, from the dangerous misdiagnosis to the vehicle damage. When I asked him what he would have told my family if the failing transmission had caused a catastrophic accident on the highway, his literal response was: "But no accident happened."
To make matters worse, after previously being told no security footage was saved, the General Manager went back to the service department and returned with a screenshot from May 27—the second day my car was there, after it had already been in their possession overnight—claiming it proved the car arrived damaged.
Avoid this dealership at all costs. Between missing a major transmission failure, deflecting blame for vehicle damage with timeline-warped "proof," and showing a complete lack of empathy for customer safety, management and service here are entirely untrustworthy.
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