Spiffy Lube nightmare in Saskatoon

[kenifilis]

hey beyonders, i'm a total lurker but i thought i'd share my story with you.

let me start by saying that up until now, jubilee ford offered me nothing but great service and in my eyes is only guilty by association since in the end, they run and own spiffy lube, therefore should be responsible for spiffy lube. that being said, lets begin.
I own a ford focus with roughly 400,000kms on it. Shes no spring chicken, but regular dealer maintenance has afforded her a long life. I am the original owner, and have always had all repairs done by authorized ford dealers because I strongly feel they are the best for the job regarding regular maintenance interval work.
I finished work one day and felt it was time for an oil change. While booking in I decided to go with the premium package, as my tires were due for a rotation, having been put on by jubilee ford 5 months prior. The oil change went smoothly and the tech proceeded to apply the impact gun to my firsts lug nut. SNAP a stud breaks off and my lugnut is rounded. Somewhat of a curveball but hey it’s a high mileage focus, so these things happen. The lady at the spiffy lube promptly explains what has occurs and tell me they need to send it to the parent dealership (jubilee ford) to safely carry on with the rotation. She books me in and I arrive 5 minutes later.
When I arrive at the dealership with appointment number in hand, they let me know that they will get my car in as soon as possible. The next morning I call the dealership to see how it went around 10:00. I receive no answer so I leave a message with all the details. No contact all day until my fiancé calls to inform me she received a message that the car is ready. Great news.
I arrive at the dealership and the service person brings up my file and says “wow your car rang up quite a bill!”. At this point I am blown away. No discussion of payment for work had ever occurred as I assumed the spiffy lube was doing the work on their bill since it was a mess up. I explained this to her and said I did not authorize any repairs to the car, and no effort on their part was made to notify me about a problem.
I don’t know about you, but when you go in for an oil change and are greeted with a 780.00 bill you start asking some hard questions.
After about a half hour of arguing with the service manager Liam (who is not the best listener btw but a fair guy nonetheless) he agrees to drop the nearly $400.00 in labour in light of my circumstances. I agree that if the parts were broken I should bear some responsibility of replacement or the rusted lugnuts that caused the issue and pay the toll after explaining to him that best practices should dictate that when any customer comes in for a repair, consultation should be given before dropping $780.00 in repairs on the vehicle.
So finally my nightmare is behind me…..
NOPE
I stop for gas the next day and realize my hood isn’t sitting flush. I pop it open and see my hood pin bent in half. This startles me so I start looking around the car. The tires were NEVER ROTATED as the front are worn and the backs look great. I am missing a valve stem cap, and my hood lever is bent beyond repair at almost a 90 degree angle.
I phone the manager of the spiffy, Pat Cross, who also happens to work at jubilee. He is nice enough on the phone and promises to call me right back with a resolution and get the hood latch replaced.
That was over a week ago and I have yet to hear back.
I feel that I need to post this to the masses in order to fairly inform as well as maybe one day receive a fair resolution. As anyone can attest, someone driving a 400000km focus is going to need a new replacement soon, and rest assured, it won’t be at a dealership who treats me like this.

attached are the details, bills, and proof to judge for yourself

http://uploader.ws/upload/201109/lugs.jpg
http://uploader.ws/upload/201109/4863_001.jpg
http://uploader.ws/upload/201109/4863_002.jpg
http://uploader.ws/upload/201109/4863_003.jpg


CLIFFS: went in for an oil change, stud broke off, i end up with an unauthorized repair bill, oil change place bends my hood stay and doesnt complete the work i paid for, basically ignores my requests for resolution

[03ozwhip]

they clearly tried to slam the hood closed with the pin still up and never bothered to tell anyone.

thats too bad, good luck with the outcome.

[Chantastic]

I would be shocked initially too at the bill...but if the parts needed replacing, they needed replacing (not 100% jiffy lubes fault, since they are 400,000km's old) and I would say the manager at Ford was super nice to drop the labor, since it's ultimately work they did and that needed to be done. Lame situation for sure though. The lack consultation sucks too, and apparently so does jiffy lubes communication to ford to tell them to rotate the tires. So a iffy situation I'd say...well, right up until I saw the hood latch. How did they manage that? Did they assume your Focus had hydraulic dampers on the hood and they needed alot of force to be moved? What the hell.

[kenifilis]

Originally posted by Chantastic
I would be shocked initially too at the bill...but if the parts needed replacing, they needed replacing (not 100% jiffy lubes fault, since they are 400,000km's old) and I would say the manager at Ford was super nice to drop the labor, since it's ultimately work they did and that needed to be done. Lame situation for sure though. The lack consultation sucks too, and apparently so does jiffy lubes communication to ford to tell them to rotate the tires. So a iffy situation I'd say...well, right up until I saw the hood latch. How did they manage that? Did they assume your Focus had hydraulic dampers on the hood and they needed alot of force to be moved? What the hell.

yeah the jubilee guys were stand up about the whole thing actually. spiffy didnt communicate with them and now i'm in this situation. i can get over the bill. i'm not a cheap guy and when repairs are needed i do them at whatever the cost as long as its fair.

it sucks that the tails wagging the dog and spiffys mismanagement is causing the issue. i'd rather treat them as seperate companies but when i have an issue like this that arrived i always end up being referred to jubilee and its like they dont care about how spiffy is tarnishing their reputation with me.

[Rat Fink]

.

[sillysod]

400,000kms shouldn't matter. I had a TDI Passat with well over 600,000kms on it (until my cousin drove it into a bridge pillar) and it was in waaay better shape than a lot of peoples 60,000km cars. I maintain all my cars and it's surprising how much you can get out of them.

The fact that everything on your inspection is a green check shows how well you maintain your vehicle.

I have had some crazy bills from South Centre and Glenmore Audi in the past, but all of them were due to normal wear and tear (and their exhorbitant rates). The problem arises when they start making repairs without first consulting you. The bent hood latch is just complete B.S. and I would simply refuse to pay it. The lugs - although ludicrously over priced - is something that comes with higher mileage cars.

Sadly a lot of dealerships see high mileage cars and assume that it's a P.O.S. and treat it accordingly. I would call back and do exactly what R.Fink suggested above.

[RickDaTuner]

They replaced all 16 wheel studs, after the idiot lube tech used an impact gun to break them off? Whats worse is that they replaced a hub too...

Man the only way these studs should be breaking is with hard autocross use, and certainly not with regular driving.

I have serviced a few 500k+ Focus units and have never had a wheel stud break on me.
The Chrome caps always come off, this from repeated impact use, but thats about as far as it goes.

I personally am really sorry that you had to go and have this happen to you, and in my eyes the lube place should have eaten the cost of it all.
Its clear that they had a straight time guy do the work as well, and you can tell by the studs that they used an air hammer with chisel bit to remove one of the studs from the back... not at all cool, considering that the only way that nut got like that was by being cross threaded and then impacted in...

replacing all the wheel studs on a focus can be done in less than 30 mins, its not a complicated procedure.


All in all man, Its looks like the service writer and the tech tried to pull a fast one on you.

[kenifilis]

Originally posted by Rat Fink
What I don't get is why the Ford inspection sheet shows the tires with more tread to be on the front. Did they write those tread depths down before they were rotated? doesn't make sense. Also, it doesn't look like a tire rotation is on your bill or is that what the platinum package entails from spiffy lube?.....in which case, when it went to ford it looked like the tire rotation had been done as per the tread measurements unless it was rotated again.


yeah that number about the tire tread was either fabricated or just backwards. the rotation was never done at the place that filled that out (spiffy) as they couldnt safely remove the tires so i'm not sure where they pulled that reading from. the platinum package is rotation, inspection, fluid top up.

[kenifilis]

Originally posted by RickDaTuner
you can tell by the studs that they used an air hammer with chisel bit to remove one of the studs from the back... not at all cool, considering that the only way that nut got like that was by being cross threaded and then impacted in...


yeah i cringed when i watched they guy trying to impact it off and hitting it a few times with the gun before it broke, then banging the broken stud out of hi bit because it was stuck in there from the twist of the gun.

[Sentry]

If you didn't authorize them to fix your broken stud... Why was it at Jubilee Ford?

Post ALL the paperwork, including the hard copy of the work order showing the customer complaint and your signature authorizing them to fix it, not just the bill and oil change sheet.

[Sentry]

Originally posted by RickDaTuner
They replaced all 16 wheel studs, after the idiot lube tech used an impact gun to break them off? Whats worse is that they replaced a hub too...
They replaced all 16 LUG NUTS because they were rusted and fucked.

They replaced the entire hub on ONE CORNER rather than individual studs on that one corner, since three of four were broken.

[kenifilis]

Originally posted by Sentry
If you didn't authorize them to fix your broken stud... Why was it at Jubilee Ford?

Post ALL the paperwork, including the hard copy of the work order showing the customer complaint and your signature authorizing them to fix it, not just the bill and oil change sheet.

the employee at spiffy booked me in and i agreed. she explained that they are owned by jubilee so its no problem for them to complete the work for them. all i have is a sticky note she wrote the appointment on. there is no work order or customer complaint form. i was never asked to fill anything out.

[Sentry]

Then your beef is entirely with Spiffy Lube, and not Ford. I'd be trying to get them to eat the entire bill, as well as get the hood latch fixed.