I have posted previous treads about a problem i was having with my radio in my c6. So yesterday 03/15/05 i took my c6 in for service in the late afternoon to drop it off at Courtesy Chevrolet in San Jose Ca.. When i dropped it off i noted the odometer mileage which was 2018 miles. When i picked it up the car had 2040 miles. So i asked why the car had 22 more miles on it. The service representative did not have an answer, so they got the service foreman who admitted he drove the car. I ask him to explain where the 22 miles had come from. He said he had to drive the car in order to find the problem. The radio in the car did not work when i brought it in, the service representative saw the problem already, why did he need to drive it to see that the radio did not work. It is a 30 mile drive to the dealership from my house, and he drove it 22 miles. DO THE MATH!!! I suspect he took my car for a 22 mile joy ride, or he took it home thinking the owner wouldnt notice. WELL I DID!
ANYBODY THAT IS CONSIDERING TAKING THEIR CAR TO COURESY CHEVROLET FOR SERVICE, DONT DO IT. YOUR CANT TRUST THEM. A copy of the letter to the owner is below.


Dear John Anderson,

I am one of your customers. I purchased a 2005 Corvette from you on January 21, 2005.
I love my car and your sales department treated me very well.

I am writing to you to convey my displeasure with your service department. In particular, Your production foreman decided to take my 2005 Corvette on a 22-mile joy ride. I left with 2018 miles and got it back with 2040. The vehicle was taken to your dealership on the afternoon of 3/19/2005 about 4 pm. I was leaving it to be serviced for a radio problem the next day. I live in Santa Cruz, leaving the car in the afternoon was more convenient for me. I did not know you take advantage of your customer’s trust by taking their Corvettes out for rides for no reason! The radio in my car would not turn on when asked and it comes on at its own will. When the radio did work you could not turn it off nor could you control the volume or anything else for that matter.

To test drive the car for a radio problem seems like a stretch, to drive it 22 miles is outrageous. I am suspicious of car dealers and their service departments to begin with, many people are. Your Production Foreman has upheld my suspicions. He had no business putting 22 miles on my vehicle. I might have accepted 5, never 22. I clocked my miles my home in Santa Cruz, it was 33 miles. And your man put 22 on it!


Where did he go! And how did he drive it! Did he lay out $50,000 + !!

After examining the vehicle very carefully, we have discovered new scratches under the front bumper. Did your man do this? We cannot prove it, but we suspect he did.


I know your sales department will not let anyone test-drive a new Corvette. Seems you don’t have the same rules for the ones you sold to your customers.

I also own a 2004 Cadillac Escalade. Cadillac had serviced my vehicle many times in its 28,000-mile history.
Never, have more than a few miles for test drive been put on this vehicle for a rattle complaint.

I am not sure if I can return to your dealership for service, I no longer trust your company.

I will be posting my complaint on corvetteforum.com for the world to read.

I have many friends with Corvettes I will be warning them.

You may call me at 831.xxx.xxxx I am looking forward to your call.

 

Thanks for the warning. I do not live in San Jose but I will take note of the odometer before taking them to any Chevy dealership to service mine.

 

not only the milage but im sure he got on it a few times as well, i would take it to the owner and demand payment!

 

I almost bought a car from them today. As it happens,
I was able to get a better deal from another local
dealer and bought my C6 from them.

I was thinking of them for service. Now I'll reconsider.

Pat

 

When I leave my car even with my family like right now I'm in Fla and my car is in RI I note my mileage. I know they would use it to keep it running fine. They say they use it to pick up my nephew from school cause he likes my car and the school just a few blocks away so I better not see 500 miles put on it, but yea leaving your car anywhere note the mileage, escpecially when its in for service any dealership or shop cause an idiot could be working there. When I worked at a dealership I never took any car for joy ride I'd take my own car and if we wanted to beat on a car we had this beater truck that was a shuttle for us that was all trashed, so we beat on that, but beware the fools that dog on customer cars.

 

I hate dealer shops! after my bad experience at a ford dealer, i won't leave my car unattended anywhere... don't even get me started on leaving my car overnight!

oh, good luck on getting anything resolved at the dealer. found the only thing i could do is tell people to go somewhere else. just as you have posted here...

 

Your post made me so angry, I actually took the time to join CF, so I could write a response. I know the Service Manager that drove your car. I know him fairly well. I’ve followed him and John Anderson from Menlo Park, up the Peninsula, and now down to Courtesy Chevy. I’ve known him from my 92 LTI, to my 99 coupe to currently two 2001 Z06’s (all from John Anderson). You’re a moron. I'm a gasoline in the veins, Mobile1 in the joints, Goodyear plastered across my forehead kinda car guy (I'm also a pretty good engineer, a real engineer not some software weenie). You epitomize everything I hate about most Corvette people. Mark, the Service Manager you’re currently mistreating, is one of the best car guys around. He's one of few people on the planet that actually knows cars, he actually reads and studies the Service Bulletins, he doesn’t part swap, he makes informed smart decisions, I’ve never seen him show any disrespect to a customer (even when I thought they deserved it) or, worse than that, mistreat a customer’s vehicle. I’ve NEVER seen Mark do something unethical. Period. I’ve seen him go to great pains to try and find, then fix really difficult problems.

You think your transient radio or electrical problems show up with your car idling on the front drive? Maybe you suppose a transient electrical issue immediately shows up with a big red flag, a helpful description, and possibly even an arrow directing the generally clueless technician to the problem? I’m sure that you assume that this helpful descriptive arrow pops up the very second someone turns onto the nearest side street? I’m sure there are no thermal transient issues, let alone any mechanical motion or time in flight issues that lead to any of your transient radio problems… You suppose that Mark has nothing better to do than drive around in your precious car (oh my God, what if it rains while he’s racking up miles “joy riding”)? I can promise you that Mark (of ALL people) has had plenty of seat time in rides that make your little sled seem mundane and he (again, of all people) has far too much much integrity to abuse your fragile ride in search of cheap thrills.

Ponder that your car won’t come onto condition for at least 5 miles (remember, this is Silicon Valley, we don’t always have the pleasure of empty, easily navigated back roads) and it might require a couple of miles after that to have the defect show up… Oh, no. Precious, undocumented, unrecoverable miles were put on my car!!! The horror of it all. I suppose that some places you might have to worry about someone out “joy riding” in your car. John Anderson does not run such a place and Mark is certainly not that kind of guy. Maybe you ought to consider that you were fortunate enough to have someone who feels dedicated enough to try and track down and fix what almost everyone else would have written off as: Could Not Replicate… Which means you take the personal time off to drive another 66 miles (cause you told me it was 33 back to Santa Cruz) to bring it back a second time when it really started to flake to the point that the average Joe could find it and fix it.

The problem with most of you people is that you have little to no understanding, let alone appreciation of how complicated these beasts are. The amount of pure drivel I hear guys spout off as gospel on the intricacies of the internal combustion engine or the technicalities of how to turn a fast lap borders on appalling. There are very, precious few car dealers that are worth a damn. There are probably fewer aftermarket shops that should even be allowed to open the hood of a modern high-performance car and you just demonstrated your ignorance in publicly dissing one of the few in the Bay Area that actually does very consistent, high quality work. Mark is one of the very few I trust to lay hands on my cars before I’m on the track and John Anderson has been as honest and enthusiastic supporter of the Corvette as I have seen in any other dealer.

In case you’re wondering? I have not a single connection to John Anderson (he has less of clue of who I am, than you do about the service you got from Mark), Mark will probably be very pissed and embarrassed that I wrote this, I spend most of my time working engineering on things that travel much faster, much stealthier, and with much more lethality than our awesome vehicles, and yes, Princess, you’re welcome to think about this and write a well-deserved public apology to the folks at Courtesy Chevrolet. Otherwise, I should hope that they require you to reap the rewards of your own advice by suffering at the hands of the much poorer service you’re going to get at the area’s other dealers.

 

WOW....Sounds Like His Boyfriend Got Mad..And if MArk Finds Out That He said anything He would be Very embarrassed that he was stickin up for him... Oh Well..Off to Bed...

 

 

Man, another whiny pi$$ing contest! This bashing crap should be against the forum rules as it is on other forums I've frequented. All you get is one person's opinion on how bad xyz is and if another member agrees, to heck with all the hundreds of satisfied customers. Maybe he's right this time, but does that make it true 100% of the time? I think not.

skatemic, I'm sorry you have a radio problem and if in fact the service person drove it for other than diagnostic purposes, shame on him. And shame on you for broadcasting it all over the internet. You have no foundation for your accusations of "joy riding" or "taking it home". Threatening them as you did demonstrates poor judgement. Bottom line is, this should be between the two of you. Hopefully you'll come to some resolution in this matter.

Sorry if I offended anyone.

 

Congratulations on a great ad hominem attack.

I'll bet you make more money than anyone else too.

Butthead.

Pat

 

In your case, the test drive was obviously unnecessary since there wasn't a mechanical issue.

GM should add a new part to their dealer service policy (Do they even have a policy?):
- Tell the customer the exact length of your test loop (no more than 5mi), if the problem can't be duplicated after running the loop 2X, notify the customer.

 

I purchased my C6 last November from these folks. This was my first experience doing business with them. I found them to be a very first class operation. I was amazed. I didn't expect to receive this fine level of service. My interaction with their service department, no major stuff, has equally been efficient, friendly and most professional. Every employee that I have encountered has treated me first rate. I live 45 minutes from the dealership. There are quite a number of other dealerships that I could do business with but I have been so impressed, so far, that I make the extra drive.
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience there. Both times I brought my C6 in for service I didn't notice any abuse nor excessive mileage. Thanks for your input but I will look into the issue a bit further before I take down an organization which up to this point has treated me great.
Good luck,

antoniopaolo

 

I gotta say, even though I am new to the forum.. I have taken my car to courtesy for service several times.

Both mark and larry are as professional as they get.

I also used to take my '02 porsche turbo to stevens creek porsche and it was common place to come back to find an extra 10-30 miles on the car. No, they were not out joy riding the car, and I never found a single scratch or nick in the car that I myself did not put in it.


Give Courtesy a break, unless you can PROVE they damaged your car, or you have a first hand account of someone who saw your car being hot rodded around town please.

 

Yeah, you offended me, and I'm glad you did. You see, banning speech to make life more pleasant is a BAD idea. Real bad. I hope the forum continues to let people rant and rave. I think the majority of us are smart enough to read between the lines and draw our own opinion.

What's even better is that YOU then go on to bash the guy with the radio problem. Sheesh...

Long live freedom of speech - ALL SPEECH, not just the politically-correct

 

Their service department is good but I would still wait while they are repairing the Corvette as they will let you watch them while you wait.

 

Guys, I've had both very good experiences and bad experiences with dealerships. For the most part, most have been good with an exception here and there. If you end up trying different dealerships, as some areas we all live in may have several close enough to do so, you have to develope a "feel" by talking with the service writer, then the mechanic and kind of walk over to the car every now and then and personally check with the mechanic(without becoming a pain in the arsh). I also find that once you develope a relationship(not that kind) with the mechanic, you can always come in and drive, or walk right over to his stall, depending on its accesability, and ask him directly about what a problem might or might not be. I also find that when you do find a good mechanic at a dealership, by tipping him a $10 or $20 bill, depending on what kind of service was performed to your car, he takes a genuine interest in both you and your car and this way you can relate to him how you would like him to treat your car when he is working on it. Oh, lastly, once you find a good mechanic, always ask that he service your car from then on. Believe me, over the past 6 years since I bought my '99 Riviera, Al, my mechanic has made my dealership experience worry free. Lastly, I, and this is me personally, try to stay and wait for the car unless its one of those 2-4 day repairs; then I make a point to check on the car occasionally and when I do, I'll go straight to the mechanic and talk with him directly. On the way out, I'll stop by the service writer and mention to him I just talked with AL (or whomever) and discussed the car's repair status. This approach works for me and has gone a long way in making my dealership experiences less painful and more pleasant.

 

HOORAH

 

Edited - if you don't have anything good to say...

Anyway, sorry this occured, but I'm sure the car is ok.

 

A bit heavy