Both my guys are not old enough to drink lol. I think that this may be the problem more than anything else. Part time guy that does a great job usually only reconditions our used vehicles. Our other guy who is 18 does all the rest. We provide a courtisy wash after any type of service. So many of his days are spent washing oil change vehicles. Some are better than others people expect to get their car back from us clean. I think that he feels that his job isn't important. Then when I have a sale I need him to get it done now, while the customers are in F&I. I usually spiff him when he does a good job and a lot of times I give him a hand. But I think maybe he just needs an attitude adjustment. His job is very imprtant because most customers value or wash job more than our oil change! Maybe just a little adjustment will help. Thanks folks.
"We provide a courtisy wash after any type of service. So many of his days are spent washing oil change vehicles"
Seeing as how many cars you guys seem to be washing, one thing your dealership may consider is a touchless, drive through car wash.
My Honda dealer has one of these, and after oil changes, they drive the car through, and there is a jet blower at the end of the tunnell that dries the vehicle. I think the cars get vacuumed out in the service bays.
Typically, I will specify that they not wash my car, because I don't know if the water is being recycled (how clean it is), nor do I want the high pressure jets blasting my wax off. However, for the average customer I see there when I go for service, they love getting their car washed this way and don't care.
For high end car dealers, I wouldn't recommend this type set up (those customers probably demand hand washing), but it sounds like this may be a good investment for your dealership. I realize this equipment may not be cheap, but it would pay for itself over time when you consider you wouldn't have to pay for wash guys, training for them, etc...
Yeah, a touchless would be perfect. In the long run and if we get a new building (my desk is in the part that is 70 years old) that would be a perfect investment. We are a new Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep dealership in a very small town, our primary service is good quality used vehicles. Thats why the detailing is so important. Most of my customers are farmers, construction firms, etc. I sell mostly 3/4 ton trucks for work. It would eliminate him (and me occasionally) from having to wash a stinky manure covered truck. Not a fun job when its 95 or when its frozen on. Touchless would be awesome.
If I ran a dealership, I would have a touchless for washing duty, and then sub contract out the waxing/reconditioning of the used cars I brought in to a detail service. I think that would be much cheaper, and less of a headache in the long run.
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=103 Actually, it was this one - an ancient CBM. Then an old Heathkit, and then a TRS-80. Of course, those were computers I used. My first self-bought computer was an Atari 400, which was a godsend. Color, sound, disk drive, and with a little work, a real keyboard.
Ditto. Moved up to a 386 IBM-compatible several years later and owned a series of PCs since then. Jumped ship Stepped up to an Apple laptop in 2005 and will probably replace the desktop with an Apple early next year.
moo, lawrence, graphic... By "unskilled" I meant no formal education or training. I would think anyone wanting to detail for a living could learn the ins and outs on how to do a good detail job in one afternoon. Now, running a detail business would obviously be different. But, in terms of skill, I would think just being able to pay close attention to detail and being a hard worker would be the only requirements to qualify one as "skilled".
That said, we paid our housekeeper roughly $40 an hour. I'm sure there are many that make more than that. People in lawncare and landscaping charge similar prices. These are hard labor intensive jobs. So, yeah...I guess $50-$75 an hour for a good detail job is worth it to some people... just not me. For me, $40 an hour for housekeeper, so I don't have to clean the bathrooms, is definitely worth it. Mrs. Jipster doesn't "enjoy" cleaning either.
I'm fairly sure it was an 8-bit 6502. the sort of processor which found it's way into cars of that era. (Desperate attempt to veer slightly on topic).
And it had a whopping 3,583 bytes (not MEGA -- not KILO -- but just plain bytes) of free memory which wouldn't have been enough to hold the contents of an ON TOPIC message including HTML formatting on these Forums!
On a quick side note, I have NEVER seen a fat detailer. It's a sweat shop back there typically. They all burn off every inch of fat while they are cleaning. God bless 'em!!
I would think anyone wanting to detail for a living could learn the ins and outs on how to do a good detail job in one afternoon. ***** Yet that's just not true. Like a woodworker/cabinet maker, there's a huge differnece between okay and top-notch.
Does the detailer leave bits of fiber from the rags here and there? Do they leave drips? Do they realize the need to wipe off the chrome first? Do they know how to deal with tires and NOT use Armor-All(and why it's bad on tires?) It's lots of little things. Paying some idiot $10-$12 an hour... well, you get what you (don't) pay for.
And as an employee, the second I got hammered from above, I not only started to look for other work, but I also did only what was required until I left. Motivating by fear is always a wrong tactic in the end. But most MBA types never figure it out until it's too late.
Detailers, like anything else, has its share of good and bad. Knowing how to CORRECTLY use an orbital buffer (without burning the paint or leaving swirls) would be one thing that takes some sort of skill. Being a detailer....well....one would hope that they would have "attention to detail" when washing or waxing a car. I'm feeling very fortunate about my housekeeper. She charges me a flat rate. It's nowhere near $40/hour...it's $80/day...including doing my laundry (I know, I'm lucky). She's been with my for many years, though...and has become a personal friend.
Back to cars....my Mother's Caddy has got to go. Three times it's left me stranded. It's still in warranty, but the battery keeps dieing. GM's answer? Don't find out what causes it to die. Just keep putting a new battery in. Three new batteries in three weeks. GEEESH.
Gonna shop it at some dealerships this afternoon. Mother GG isn't going to be pleased. But, she may cheer up when I give her a check. I'm not going to have a vehicle in my "fleet" that is unreliable...no matter how nice it is.
Can't wait to see what she says to me when I tell her to sign the title over to whomever I find a decent offer from.... :sick:
Just take it to a competant shop - a different dealer.
It obviously has an electrical short somewhere, and one that's fixed, it'll be a good car again. Trading it in - it's a financial disaster compared to fixing what you've got. Now, if the engine needed replacing that's a whole other story...
pletko.....I had it towed to two different Caddy dealerships. Their "fix" is the same. Put a new battery in it (what the shop manual says needs to be done)....not find out what the issue is that causes the battery to die.
I was getting "high" on GM a bit when I first started to drive My Mother's STS. Now, it seems.....same ole' GM.
I can't believe that it's going to be less trouble to sell the car at a discount than to escalate the problem with GM and get it fixed. GM will normally bend over backwards to please customers with their premium brands. Otherwise, changing batteries without fixing the electrical problem makes as much sense as continually changing scratched windshields, but not changing the wipers that are damaging them!
Of course, you might just be looking for an excuse to dump the STS.
Their "fix" is the same. Put a new battery in it (what the shop manual says needs to be done)....not find out what the issue is that causes the battery to die.
From my experience when new batteries keep failing and can't be recharged, thereby needing a replacement, they are being cooked (overcharged) because of a bad regulator. GM alternators used to have the regulators mounted within the alternator and replacing the alternator is the fix (or the regulator within it). However, the regulating may be controlled by the computer today.
Try to appeal to the service departments senses to check the voltage regulating system.
Take a ball-peen hammer with you. They don't like to see people on the other side of the service counter with enforcement devices.
Good luck,
jmonroe
'15 Genesis V8 with Ultimate Package and '18 Legacy Limited 6 cyl
Detailing might not require a doctoral degree, but some are better than others, and you tend to (not) get what you (don't) pay for.
A cheaper detailer will probably use inferior materials (cutting corners to save money). A poor quality worker can burn off paint with a buffer and will leave swirl marks.
If you use a car wash where your car is hand dried by using circular motions, then swirl marks will eventually result. Likewise, cheap towels, including the terrycloth that were once preferred, will scratch the paint.
To avoid swirl marks you need to use non-abrasive towels, such as those made of waffleweave microfiber, and dry it in straight lines from front to back, not in circles. If your cars are darker colored and/or have metallic paint, then problems will become more noticeable if you use a cheap carwash or, even worse, use washes that use mechanical brushes to clean the car. If you have a white car, then it may not be so obvious.
from a customer perspective, a law enforcement uniform seems to help. my brother in law works at a court and remarked that recognizing the folks in the service department seems to get him better service.
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
I don't know what state you're in...but in NJ, the Lemon Law will apply if the same nonconformity has been subject to repair three times by the dealer and the nonconformity still exists...then the manufacturer is under a duty to repurchase/replace the motor vehicle...
Please tell me why it is important to dry the chrome first, your post piqued my cortex...:):):):):)
Also, as far as what detailers are paid, it depends on the quality of work they do...if all they do is vacuum the carpets and windex the windows but ignore the edges of the glass, and not much else, they are not worth minimum wage...
In fact, the only reason for the minimum wage is so that the people who are paid it, aren't paid what they are actually worth, or else they would barely make $2/hour...:):):):):)
At the Mitsubishi dealership I used a while back, they used convict labor to do the washing, detailing and cleaning on vehicles brought in for service. Paid them minimum wage, but, like everyone says, you get what you pay for. FWIW, I believe it was this cheap labor that resulted in a loss of a nice Pioneer CD player in the truck I traded in when I bought my Mits. I didn't have the tools to take it out that day, but told the dealer I'd be back the next day to get it since it would look nice in my new Montero Sport. After they drove it around back, I remembered I had forgotten something and went to retrieve it. Came across a couple of shady looking guys doing washes and made the off-hand comment I was coming back the next day to get my radio since I didn't want to lose it. Lo and behold, I get back to the dealer the next day and the driver's window had been busted in and radio taken from the dash that previous night. 'That's never happened before' I was told. Right! They tried to make up for it by offering some freebies for the new vehicle, which I ended up taking (cruise control, back seat cover, oil changes), so I actually made out better, but still. I still have that old radio's remote, which surprisingly, works with the new one I now have.
I asked Mother GG whether this had happened to her before when she was driving the Caddy. She said it had, but thought it was a result of the fact that she only drove it a couple of times/week...and it sat for long periods of time. She always called the "roadside assistance" people to jump the car. I guess it would run and start fine for a couple of weeks, and then "die" again.
Spoke to the selling dealer's Service Manager. He was pretty useless. He insisted that he followed all the correct procedures. I quizzed him about how many times a person has to report a problem that couldn't be fixed before GM got involved? He stated that all the incidences were separate with separate causes (but the "dead battery" gave the same result). I don't think he knows the cause because it would take too long to diagnose. Spoke to Cadillac Customer Service to explain the situation. They said they had the service records, but each service incident was "Closed"....corrected with a new battery.
There's some "smoke and mirrors" going on...praticularly given that 3 different dealers can't correctly diagnose the problem. Told Mother GG about it (since the car is registered in her name). Told her I'd write a letter to Cadillac, giving them one more shot to fix the car before she proceeds with "lemon law".
We'll see what happens.
Sorry to hi-jack the thread. I should be posting this elsewhere.
Thats interesting we are in the middle of a problem with a vehicle right now.
What most people don't know is that there are actually three levels of lemon law.
First one is trade assist where the maker of the vehicle assists the retailer by covering the short fall between the value of the used vehicle and the value of the new vehicle.
That is what we are doing right now. We have a Land Rover with a problem that is very repairable but because of a combination of factors will take weeks if not months to repair.
Once we realized what was happening we contacted Land Rover to let them know we would be advising the customer to request a replacement vehicle.
Trade assist is the best solution to a problem car if the problem can be identified ahead of time and it is a repairable problem.
The customer gets a brand new car at no cost to them.
The retailer gets a nice trade in that they own RIGHT.
The vehicle manufacturer spends the lease amount of money to get the customer out of the problem car.
The next level is a buy back where the vehicle carries a re-Acquired Vehicle Title(RAV) and it loses the majority of its factory warranty. Depending on the state a RAV title car will have 12 months and 12,000 miles of warranty from the date it is re sold and that is it.
This costs the vehicle manufacturer a bit a lot more money and de-values the used vehicle a lot more so the retailer will probably not want to keep it.
Lemon law is the last and most serious level of the law and is probably the lease common. The vehicle loses all warranty and is branded with a Lemon law title making the car nearly worthless.
It doesn't happen very often. In fact I can only think of one lemon law vehicle that we have ever had. That one was totally BS as well. The owner took advantage of the law to basically drive the car for free over a two year period. He made sure that little problems were magnified into huge ones and that they car stayed out of service the required amount of days.
Right before his lemon law option expired by time he started the lemon law proceedings and finalized it within days of the cut off.
Only cost him about 10,000 dollars to drive a 80,000 dollar plus vehicle for 24 months.
He stated that all the incidences were separate with separate causes...
Bull. Unless you've gotten three bad Delco batteries in a row, it sounds like there is something in the car drawing too much current and they need to perform the appropriate load tests to determine what it is; or, the car's voltage regulator is overcharging the battery and killing it; or, the dealers are overcharging the batteries before installing them, causing them to die...
This would be unacceptable service on a car which cost half as much. They need to be finding the root cause.
If you're still reading these boards, let us know if you sold a dark blue Xterra in the past few days. My neighbor across the street just bought one with your dealer's tags on it, so I'm wondering if you or someone you know made the sale.
BR....thanks for the explanations. They're helpful.
I'm in a bit of a quandary here. I think my mother has been "shoved around" a bit by the dealership service depts because of her age. Don't mess with my family.
I expect that Cadillac will make some sort of attempt to fix the car, yet again. If the source of the problem isn't fixed, I have no confidence that this issue won't happen again. The service depts are just going by the book...that is, to just replace the battery.
Problem is, since I now have possession of my Mother's car, I'm the one who has to deal with it.
While not GM's problem, we've got a car that my Mother can't drive, and one that I don't need. So, giving my Mother another car really isn't attractive, to either of us. I'm also not in the mood to get into a protracted fight with Cadillac. It does irritate me that all the dealerships I've dealt with, won't/can't find a permanent fix. If they could fix it, I'm willing to drive it until my Mother makes up her mind to let me sell it. Nice option to have. But, not if it's going to cause me grief and irritation.
I suppose I could just take it back to my Mother and let it sit. That's not an attractive alternative, since that's not going to solve the problem with the car. And, I don't want to saddle my Mother with the irritation.
Aside from my personal situation, the car, in fact, doesn't work the way it should. It's under warranty. I'm sure they'll come back and ask me to give them one more chance to fix it (which will be the 4th try....no matter that the dealership service depts consider them to be 3-4 separate "service" items.
There are some other issues with the car that I've found that I'm sure my Mother never used/noticed (voice recognition recognizes no one's voice....no matter how fast/slow, loud/soft, you vary your speech patterns...expecially compared to the voice recognition in my BMW..which is excellent). It's "hit & miss" whether my blue tooth phone is recognized by the car (even though it paired successfully). Sometimes it works....most times it doesn't. When it does work, when a phone call comes in, the radio does not mute through the speakers (as it should). That causes all sorts of problems. When I manually mute the radio...or turn it off completely when a phone call comes in, I essentially mute the microphone in the car, too. That means I can't hear the person on the other end, and they can't hear me. If that's the way it was designed (as the service depts say), it's a useless feature and at the very least, a very poor design.
Dealerships say I'm "nitpicking". I say, the features are supposed to work, but don't. Small problems that are magnified? I don't see it that way. These are things that work in a $25K Camry. The Cadillac is a $50K+ car. This level of frustration shouldn't exist.
Please tell me, from your perspective, is my thinking way off base? Is this truly a "lemon"?
I have some ideas on what you could do. I need some time to sort through them and I won't be able to do that today at work. Look for a post sometime this evening.
corvette...I'm with you. I don't see all of these Delco batteries being bad. Something, indeed, is drawing power....just enough so that it won't fail in a day, but maybe a week.
I've got my own theory. The car has "auto off/auto on" headlights. Setting the lights to go off 30 seconds after "shutdown", the lights will sometimes be on much longer than that and I have to manually shut the lights off (if I remember to check them). I'll suspect that all the "standby" systems in the car (internal lighting, NAV system, stereo, etc all stay in "standby" mode, but won't shutoff when the car shuts down). Since the car's battery runs dead after it has been sitting for several hours (like overnight), I'm suspecting these standby systems are swithcing on and off with no interaction from me...i.e. a short or "fritzy" logic in the car's "automatic systems".
Tried to tell the service depts about that. They say it's unrelated.
BR...you're thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Shoot, maybe you can hire my girlfriend. She's even more obsessed over keeping the house clean than I am about my cars. She cleans my house so well, the bathroom alone is ready for a concours!
I hope you'll continue to keep this forum appraised of the developments with your mom's Caddy. So far your treatment seems anything but luxurious. I suspect that the service techs see tracking down the electrical gremlins that are haunting this vehicle as a low priority for some reason. Have you checked to see if there are any technical service bulletins related to this problem?
I have a slow electrical drain on my 92 MR2, which I think is coming from the CD player. The Toyota service folks are happy to try to track it down, but insist that it may be cost-prohibitive. It's only a problem if the car sits for 4 or 5 weeks (although I try to drive it more often). I installed one of those trickle chargers that attach to the side of the battery and keep it plugged in to my garage. 5 years of use with no battery drain or other complications.
Of course, in your case this problem should be addressed through simple warranty claim--and your mom's car is considerably newer than mine so one would hope it wouldn't be suffering any electrical maladies at such a young age.
Again, keep us informed. I always enjoy your stories, painful as they might be for you.
Oh oh! Is chamois still OK? Where do you get these waffleweave microfiber towels? Fortunately, I have a white car, so I guess I won't see the results of what I've been doing wrong all this time.
I never use a buffer on my ride - always hand wax. What should one use on tires in lieu of Armor-All?
It's almost certainly some sort of drain or short somewhere. It could be in the power door locks or any number of other minor things. It's definately fixable, though, by any competant shop. Try taking it to the dealer a town over.
For the tires, plain old soap and a good soft brush. There's no magic here - just lots of elbow grease. The Armor-All makes it shiny, but it also pulls the oil out of the plastic and rubber. Tires should look like rubber anyways, IMO, and not plastic.
Supposedly, the older formulations of Armor-All did cause dashes to crack, but they have since changed the formulation... The big thing now are the soft-touch coated plastics on door pulls, etc.--they don't react well to some of the "protectants" on the market.
I agree about the slimy artificial look, though, and when detailing my own vehicles, I just clean the dash and interior panels with Simple Green. I do apply a protectant/gloss to the tires, though, and I clean and condition any leather parts.
FWIW - I had similar problem with another GM product, it turned out to be the automatic light switch in the trunk. It wasn't going off when the trunk was closed. ??
Don't know why you continue to spread this mis-information on Armor All. You've been told several times, by many different members, that Armor All uses a different formula than the one from 20 years ago. It is safe!
Keep in mind that Lemon Laws vary from state to state. Georgia and Tennessee, among others, have very limited lemon laws, thanks to the lobbying of major dealerships, while states like CA tend to have stronger Lemon laws.
I see a parallel with this, I too had a some issues with that product and I wouldn't use it if you gave it to me, new formula or not. It might summarize how people feel towards various makes and models of cars, where they were done wrong and now those makes are out of consideration. Maguires stuff has worked well for me...they seem to be over-marketed right now, but twice I have called their help line for, well, help, and they told me the products and process to use to fix the issue and it worked. By the way, you can usually buff "kiss marks" from autocross cones right out of the paint... :P
Comments
high on a hog, I say!
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Seeing as how many cars you guys seem to be washing, one thing your dealership may consider is a touchless, drive through car wash.
My Honda dealer has one of these, and after oil changes, they drive the car through, and there is a jet blower at the end of the tunnell that dries the vehicle. I think the cars get vacuumed out in the service bays.
Typically, I will specify that they not wash my car, because I don't know if the water is being recycled (how clean it is), nor do I want the high pressure jets blasting my wax off. However, for the average customer I see there when I go for service, they love getting their car washed this way and don't care.
For high end car dealers, I wouldn't recommend this type set up (those customers probably demand hand washing), but it sounds like this may be a good investment for your dealership. I realize this equipment may not be cheap, but it would pay for itself over time when you consider you wouldn't have to pay for wash guys, training for them, etc...
Actually, it was this one - an ancient CBM. Then an old Heathkit, and then a TRS-80. Of course, those were computers I used. My first self-bought computer was an Atari 400, which was a godsend. Color, sound, disk drive, and with a little work, a real keyboard.
The first computer I remember growing up was an Apple II+.
The first PC I got was a 486 so I could use an EPROM burner to dink around with the car's on board computer and also to have OBDII readout on screen.
Ditto. Moved up to a 386 IBM-compatible several years later and owned a series of PCs since then.
Jumped shipStepped up to an Apple laptop in 2005 and will probably replace the desktop with an Apple early next year.That said, we paid our housekeeper roughly $40 an hour. I'm sure there are many that make more than that. People in lawncare and landscaping charge similar prices. These are hard labor intensive jobs. So, yeah...I guess $50-$75 an hour for a good detail job is worth it to some people... just not me. For me, $40 an hour for housekeeper, so I don't have to clean the bathrooms, is definitely worth it.
Mrs. Jipster doesn't "enjoy" cleaning either.
And it had a whopping 3,583 bytes (not MEGA -- not KILO -- but just plain bytes) of free memory which wouldn't have been enough to hold the contents of an ON TOPIC message including HTML formatting on these Forums!
tidester, host
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
It's a sweat shop back there typically. They all burn off every inch of fat while they are cleaning. God bless 'em!!
-Moo
*****
Yet that's just not true. Like a woodworker/cabinet maker, there's a huge differnece between okay and top-notch.
Does the detailer leave bits of fiber from the rags here and there? Do they leave drips? Do they realize the need to wipe off the chrome first? Do they know how to deal with tires and NOT use Armor-All(and why it's bad on tires?)
It's lots of little things. Paying some idiot $10-$12 an hour... well, you get what you (don't) pay for.
And as an employee, the second I got hammered from above, I not only started to look for other work, but I also did only what was required until I left. Motivating by fear is always a wrong tactic in the end. But most MBA types never figure it out until it's too late.
Back to cars....my Mother's Caddy has got to go. Three times it's left me stranded. It's still in warranty, but the battery keeps dieing. GM's answer? Don't find out what causes it to die. Just keep putting a new battery in. Three new batteries in three weeks. GEEESH.
Gonna shop it at some dealerships this afternoon. Mother GG isn't going to be pleased. But, she may cheer up when I give her a check. I'm not going to have a vehicle in my "fleet" that is unreliable...no matter how nice it is.
Can't wait to see what she says to me when I tell her to sign the title over to whomever I find a decent offer from.... :sick:
It obviously has an electrical short somewhere, and one that's fixed, it'll be a good car again. Trading it in - it's a financial disaster compared to fixing what you've got. Now, if the engine needed replacing that's a whole other story...
I was getting "high" on GM a bit when I first started to drive My Mother's STS. Now, it seems.....same ole' GM.
Of course, you might just be looking for an excuse to dump the STS.
From my experience when new batteries keep failing and can't be recharged, thereby needing a replacement, they are being cooked (overcharged) because of a bad regulator. GM alternators used to have the regulators mounted within the alternator and replacing the alternator is the fix (or the regulator within it). However, the regulating may be controlled by the computer today.
Try to appeal to the service departments senses to check the voltage regulating system.
Take a ball-peen hammer with you. They don't like to see people on the other side of the service counter with enforcement devices.
Good luck,
jmonroe
'15 Genesis V8 with Ultimate Package and '18 Legacy Limited 6 cyl
I would just pick it up when people gave me a hard time.
A cheaper detailer will probably use inferior materials (cutting corners to save money). A poor quality worker can burn off paint with a buffer and will leave swirl marks.
If you use a car wash where your car is hand dried by using circular motions, then swirl marks will eventually result. Likewise, cheap towels, including the terrycloth that were once preferred, will scratch the paint.
To avoid swirl marks you need to use non-abrasive towels, such as those made of waffleweave microfiber, and dry it in straight lines from front to back, not in circles. If your cars are darker colored and/or have metallic paint, then problems will become more noticeable if you use a cheap carwash or, even worse, use washes that use mechanical brushes to clean the car. If you have a white car, then it may not be so obvious.
No acceptable offers were made today for Mother GG, anyway. Looks like we keep "fixing" it.
Yeah, you told us about this before.
Now tell us how many times you used it when the customer had his persuader ready to go.
Might be fun to watch but you would have a reach advantage.
jmonroe
'15 Genesis V8 with Ultimate Package and '18 Legacy Limited 6 cyl
I don't know what state you're in...but in NJ, the Lemon Law will apply if the same nonconformity has been subject to repair three times by the dealer and the nonconformity still exists...then the manufacturer is under a duty to repurchase/replace the motor vehicle...
http://www.mylemon.com/nj-lemon-law.htm
Also, as far as what detailers are paid, it depends on the quality of work they do...if all they do is vacuum the carpets and windex the windows but ignore the edges of the glass, and not much else, they are not worth minimum wage...
In fact, the only reason for the minimum wage is so that the people who are paid it, aren't paid what they are actually worth, or else they would barely make $2/hour...:):):):):)
Spoke to the selling dealer's Service Manager. He was pretty useless. He insisted that he followed all the correct procedures. I quizzed him about how many times a person has to report a problem that couldn't be fixed before GM got involved? He stated that all the incidences were separate with separate causes (but the "dead battery" gave the same result). I don't think he knows the cause because it would take too long to diagnose. Spoke to Cadillac Customer Service to explain the situation. They said they had the service records, but each service incident was "Closed"....corrected with a new battery.
There's some "smoke and mirrors" going on...praticularly given that 3 different dealers can't correctly diagnose the problem. Told Mother GG about it (since the car is registered in her name). Told her I'd write a letter to Cadillac, giving them one more shot to fix the car before she proceeds with "lemon law".
We'll see what happens.
Sorry to hi-jack the thread. I should be posting this elsewhere.
What most people don't know is that there are actually three levels of lemon law.
First one is trade assist where the maker of the vehicle assists the retailer by covering the short fall between the value of the used vehicle and the value of the new vehicle.
That is what we are doing right now. We have a Land Rover with a problem that is very repairable but because of a combination of factors will take weeks if not months to repair.
Once we realized what was happening we contacted Land Rover to let them know we would be advising the customer to request a replacement vehicle.
Trade assist is the best solution to a problem car if the problem can be identified ahead of time and it is a repairable problem.
The customer gets a brand new car at no cost to them.
The retailer gets a nice trade in that they own RIGHT.
The vehicle manufacturer spends the lease amount of money to get the customer out of the problem car.
The next level is a buy back where the vehicle carries a re-Acquired Vehicle Title(RAV) and it loses the majority of its factory warranty. Depending on the state a RAV title car will have 12 months and 12,000 miles of warranty from the date it is re sold and that is it.
This costs the vehicle manufacturer a bit a lot more money and de-values the used vehicle a lot more so the retailer will probably not want to keep it.
Lemon law is the last and most serious level of the law and is probably the lease common. The vehicle loses all warranty and is branded with a Lemon law title making the car nearly worthless.
It doesn't happen very often. In fact I can only think of one lemon law vehicle that we have ever had. That one was totally BS as well. The owner took advantage of the law to basically drive the car for free over a two year period. He made sure that little problems were magnified into huge ones and that they car stayed out of service the required amount of days.
Right before his lemon law option expired by time he started the lemon law proceedings and finalized it within days of the cut off.
Only cost him about 10,000 dollars to drive a 80,000 dollar plus vehicle for 24 months.
Bull. Unless you've gotten three bad Delco batteries in a row, it sounds like there is something in the car drawing too much current and they need to perform the appropriate load tests to determine what it is; or, the car's voltage regulator is overcharging the battery and killing it; or, the dealers are overcharging the batteries before installing them, causing them to die...
This would be unacceptable service on a car which cost half as much. They need to be finding the root cause.
I'm in a bit of a quandary here. I think my mother has been "shoved around" a bit by the dealership service depts because of her age. Don't mess with my family.
I expect that Cadillac will make some sort of attempt to fix the car, yet again. If the source of the problem isn't fixed, I have no confidence that this issue won't happen again. The service depts are just going by the book...that is, to just replace the battery.
Problem is, since I now have possession of my Mother's car, I'm the one who has to deal with it.
While not GM's problem, we've got a car that my Mother can't drive, and one that I don't need. So, giving my Mother another car really isn't attractive, to either of us. I'm also not in the mood to get into a protracted fight with Cadillac. It does irritate me that all the dealerships I've dealt with, won't/can't find a permanent fix. If they could fix it, I'm willing to drive it until my Mother makes up her mind to let me sell it. Nice option to have. But, not if it's going to cause me grief and irritation.
I suppose I could just take it back to my Mother and let it sit. That's not an attractive alternative, since that's not going to solve the problem with the car. And, I don't want to saddle my Mother with the irritation.
Aside from my personal situation, the car, in fact, doesn't work the way it should. It's under warranty. I'm sure they'll come back and ask me to give them one more chance to fix it (which will be the 4th try....no matter that the dealership service depts consider them to be 3-4 separate "service" items.
There are some other issues with the car that I've found that I'm sure my Mother never used/noticed (voice recognition recognizes no one's voice....no matter how fast/slow, loud/soft, you vary your speech patterns...expecially compared to the voice recognition in my BMW..which is excellent). It's "hit & miss" whether my blue tooth phone is recognized by the car (even though it paired successfully). Sometimes it works....most times it doesn't. When it does work, when a phone call comes in, the radio does not mute through the speakers (as it should). That causes all sorts of problems. When I manually mute the radio...or turn it off completely when a phone call comes in, I essentially mute the microphone in the car, too. That means I can't hear the person on the other end, and they can't hear me. If that's the way it was designed (as the service depts say), it's a useless feature and at the very least, a very poor design.
Dealerships say I'm "nitpicking". I say, the features are supposed to work, but don't. Small problems that are magnified? I don't see it that way. These are things that work in a $25K Camry. The Cadillac is a $50K+ car. This level of frustration shouldn't exist.
Please tell me, from your perspective, is my thinking way off base? Is this truly a "lemon"?
I've got my own theory. The car has "auto off/auto on" headlights. Setting the lights to go off 30 seconds after "shutdown", the lights will sometimes be on much longer than that and I have to manually shut the lights off (if I remember to check them). I'll suspect that all the "standby" systems in the car (internal lighting, NAV system, stereo, etc all stay in "standby" mode, but won't shutoff when the car shuts down). Since the car's battery runs dead after it has been sitting for several hours (like overnight), I'm suspecting these standby systems are swithcing on and off with no interaction from me...i.e. a short or "fritzy" logic in the car's "automatic systems".
Tried to tell the service depts about that. They say it's unrelated.
BR...you're thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I hope you'll continue to keep this forum appraised of the developments with your mom's Caddy. So far your treatment seems anything but luxurious. I suspect that the service techs see tracking down the electrical gremlins that are haunting this vehicle as a low priority for some reason. Have you checked to see if there are any technical service bulletins related to this problem?
I have a slow electrical drain on my 92 MR2, which I think is coming from the CD player. The Toyota service folks are happy to try to track it down, but insist that it may be cost-prohibitive. It's only a problem if the car sits for 4 or 5 weeks (although I try to drive it more often). I installed one of those trickle chargers that attach to the side of the battery and keep it plugged in to my garage. 5 years of use with no battery drain or other complications.
Of course, in your case this problem should be addressed through simple warranty claim--and your mom's car is considerably newer than mine so one would hope it wouldn't be suffering any electrical maladies at such a young age.
Again, keep us informed. I always enjoy your stories, painful as they might be for you.
Gogiboy
I never use a buffer on my ride - always hand wax. What should one use on tires in lieu of Armor-All?
For the tires, plain old soap and a good soft brush. There's no magic here - just lots of elbow grease. The Armor-All makes it shiny, but it also pulls the oil out of the plastic and rubber. Tires should look like rubber anyways, IMO, and not plastic.
It'll make your dash crack and it just gives everything a slimy artificial look and feel.
I agree about the slimy artificial look, though, and when detailing my own vehicles, I just clean the dash and interior panels with Simple Green. I do apply a protectant/gloss to the tires, though, and I clean and condition any leather parts.
Don't know why you continue to spread this mis-information on Armor All. You've been told several times, by many different members, that Armor All uses a different formula than the one from 20 years ago. It is safe!
And,I don't recall ANYONE telling me the stuff has been changed!
Safe of not, it still leaves a slimy look to things.
It sounds like you like that look, so use it!
This may refresh your memory. Link
It might summarize how people feel towards various makes and models of cars, where they were done wrong and now those makes are out of consideration.
Maguires stuff has worked well for me...they seem to be over-marketed right now, but twice I have called their help line for, well, help, and they told me the products and process to use to fix the issue and it worked. By the way, you can usually buff "kiss marks" from autocross cones right out of the paint... :P