Fed up with dealership
 

Let me explain everything start to finish as to what is going on before I get into why I am so pissed off with this dealership (we'll call it dealership1 for now)

Almost 2 months ago I brought my car into dealership1 because I had a very loud whine coming from my trans. When I brought the car to them I showed them the whine in the trans and a flywheel/ throw out bearing rattle that was highly audible at idle. They then took my car and gave me a courtesy vehicle and I was on my way.
The next day rolls around and they explain to me that they can no longer hear the rattle at idle, but can in fact hear the whine in the trans. They then proceed to ask me if I wanted to come down again to identify the rattle with the shop foreman. It was no big deal so I went down there after work and showed them the rattle. The foreman did in fact hear it.
The next day I get a call saying that they need a Toyota representative to come out and check out the car because of the modifications I had done to the vehicle before they do any warranty work. In my mind I was wondering why in the hell do they need to check and see if springs, exhaust, and wheels need to be "checked out". Anyway wasn't a big deal at the time and didn't think about it too much.
So the weekend passes over and the rep showed up on Monday. I got a call later that Monday saying that they will proceed to replace my transmission under warranty.
They ended up replacing my transmission and my throw out bearing.

I have the car for about a week before I bring the car back in to the same dealership1 with a new problem, my shifter vibrates horribly off and on in 5th gear and only in 5th gear whether it be shifting 4th to 5th or 6th to 5th or it just resting in 5th gear. There is a vibration and I've never had it happen before. Anyways brought it back to dealership1 to have them check it out. I went on a test drive with one of the techs and he did say that he noticed it and that they would need the car overnight in order to compare it with another tech's personal FR-S the following morning.
I get a call and they tell me that this is a normal characteristic of the FR-S transmission and I should not be worried. I didn't argue with them, I just went back and picked up my car.

I gave it about roughly 1500 miles driving it that way thinking that maybe the new transmission needed to be broken in. It wasn't getting better so I took it to a local shop who the owner specializes in the twins and I had him drive my car. When he drove it he said "this is definitely not normal, I have never felt this before in any of the FR-S' or BRZ's and I drive around 10 different ones a week. If I were you I'd take it to a different dealership and see what they say."

So that's exactly what I did, I had a free oil&filter change at another dealership (we'll call this dealership2) and while my car was there I asked them to take a look at the vibration in 5th. After the test drive and diagnosis they said that it seems the rear shifter bushing looks to be damaged and to take it back to dealership1. Here's the dealership2 notes; Test drove veh verified body vibration in shifter at 4th to 5th upshift inspect shifter bushing and gromets found rear shifter bushing looks to have been damaged from trans repair return to repairing dealer and repair rear bushing and perform diagnosis.

I call up dealership1 and told them about dealership2's findings. They said to bring it in the next day. I bring the car back to dealership1 to have them finally check out what has been going on with the shifter. I got a call and they said that they inspected the rear shifter bushing and it doesn't look to be damaged but seems to have a bunch of *something* grease. (I can't remember what grease he was talking about.) He then proceeds to tell me that they ordered a new shifter bushing so that they can compare the two. My car has now been at dealership1 for 10 days with no new news about the bushing showing up. They said they don't know what is taking so long but it might be on backorder, "so it might take a couple days, a couple weeks, or even a couple months to show up." I then asked for the part numbers and I called dealership2 back up and asked them if they had those parts. They said that they don't have them on hand but they could order them and have them here in 2 days.

So here I am, my car is basking in the California sun just sitting at a dealership and the longer my car sits there with no work being done to it the more frustrated I am getting with dealership1, and I just don't know what to do..

Just take your car back to dealership2 and have them do the work. I don't know how Scion works but with Subie, our car is covered at ANY subaru dealership.

Sell it and buy a mustang. Totaled. etc.

RIP

Yea I would call subaru/email subaru directly about the situation. If dealership 2 seems amenable as it does from your post let them continue the work. It's a dealership network no reason you HAVE TO use the same one for repair beginning to end if you are not happy with their work.

I thought something was not going wrong but you just need to wait or start bugging them everyday for progress of your car. since they didnt deny any warranty work i wouldnt worry so much

Maybe I should've mentioned it was Toyota and not Subaru..

Just bring the yo car to dealership 2. They are authorized to do the repair. The trans repair is on file with all the Toyota dealerships and one dealership can request paperwork/repair orders from the other.

buy a subie

Sorry I said subaru since I have a BRZ. but just replace subaru with toyota, same thing.

Your car is under warranty. Had a warranty repair. Repair is not to your satisfaction. You can bring to another dealer.

I was asking my girlfriend basically the same thing yesterday, where if theres a way to call Toyota directly and tell them what is going on rather than having to continue to go through dealership1.

Just go to the website and look for contact information. I had an issue with a subaru dealer. Sent an email and subaru called me and set it straight.

http://i67.tinypic.com/fyn0ia.png

The thing about backorder parts is that there are no ETA. So it's hard to give exact dates of when a part might come in. But atleast they are fixing your problem and not just telling you to go home and fix it out of your own pockets.

Ugh...sorry to hear about your experience. I had a similar (but much worse) experience. When dealership 1 (in my case) replaced my transmission they damaged another part. Dealership 2 was able to diagnose what was damaged after the Subaru field engineer came to look at it. Maybe when they replaced your transmission the tech damaged a part in your car, too.

That is his exact story.... dealership1 is waiting for a "backordered" part to compare what dealership2 says is damaged.