shaftwagon
Member
Thought I would share a recent, painful story. I bought a brand new silver '08 MS3 on 1/31/09 at Towne Mazda in Buffalo, NY. The car was built ~9/07, had 220 miles on it, and sat on their lot for quite some time (along with 3 identical other cars). I got a amazing deal on it- $19,500 before tax title and lease.
20 minutes after leaving the dealer's lot with my new car the check engine light went on. Since it was Saturday, noone answered at service department. I took the car to my local dealer in Rochester, NY on Tuesday. They said the computer reported a "low voltage" error and they reset it and my car was fine.... until about 45 minutes after driving off their lot. The next day I was back there and the service manager says "you're going to want to come with me".
He took me under the car up on a lift and showed me that a number of wires had been chewed off under the car just above the plastic shield (see picture, red circles show some of the damage). The tech says "hey, that's your reverse light wire right there.... do you have reverse lights". They'd never seen anything like this on a new car. When we got the car off the lift we tried the reverse lights- and there were none.
So now i'm pissed, really pissed. It's not their fault that there was rodent damage to this car- but they put a NY state inspection sticker on there and NEVER actually did a full inspection. This was a serious liability issue.
The car went back to the original dealer, Towne Mazda, on Friday. The tech admitted that they never fully inpsected it. To make a long story short- they offered me the car back repaired with an extra 2 year warranty. I refused. After talking to many people at Towne Mazda they eventually gave me an identical brand new MS3 with 30 miles on it. I wasted 10 hours of my time, 3 afternoons off from work, 300 miles driving, plus a couple hours on the phone to clear this up. After threatening to report them to the DMV for not performing the inspection and to Mazda for their poor customer service they gave me $100 extra for my trouble. I was not satisfied with this.
Bad luck I guess. Does anyone think I should push this further with Mazda USA? I'm still pretty pissed off at the original dealer. None of this would have happened had they actually inspected it like they were supposed to and noticed the reverse lights didn't work.
20 minutes after leaving the dealer's lot with my new car the check engine light went on. Since it was Saturday, noone answered at service department. I took the car to my local dealer in Rochester, NY on Tuesday. They said the computer reported a "low voltage" error and they reset it and my car was fine.... until about 45 minutes after driving off their lot. The next day I was back there and the service manager says "you're going to want to come with me".
He took me under the car up on a lift and showed me that a number of wires had been chewed off under the car just above the plastic shield (see picture, red circles show some of the damage). The tech says "hey, that's your reverse light wire right there.... do you have reverse lights". They'd never seen anything like this on a new car. When we got the car off the lift we tried the reverse lights- and there were none.
So now i'm pissed, really pissed. It's not their fault that there was rodent damage to this car- but they put a NY state inspection sticker on there and NEVER actually did a full inspection. This was a serious liability issue.
The car went back to the original dealer, Towne Mazda, on Friday. The tech admitted that they never fully inpsected it. To make a long story short- they offered me the car back repaired with an extra 2 year warranty. I refused. After talking to many people at Towne Mazda they eventually gave me an identical brand new MS3 with 30 miles on it. I wasted 10 hours of my time, 3 afternoons off from work, 300 miles driving, plus a couple hours on the phone to clear this up. After threatening to report them to the DMV for not performing the inspection and to Mazda for their poor customer service they gave me $100 extra for my trouble. I was not satisfied with this.
Bad luck I guess. Does anyone think I should push this further with Mazda USA? I'm still pretty pissed off at the original dealer. None of this would have happened had they actually inspected it like they were supposed to and noticed the reverse lights didn't work.
