Trying to lose my business?

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life, Rants

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Back in April, we bought a new car from Carousel Motors. And until yesterday, it’s been great. I let me explain…

Yesterday, I went home for my lunch hour. When my time was up, I went down to the car to get back to work. The car unlocked and started up without any problems. What was a problem is the ASL light turned on and stayed on. Normally, this light turns off once you press down on the brake pedal. It’s there to prevent you from shifting into gear without having the brake pressed to avoid accidents. Except now, my foot was on the brake and I was still stuck in park. I fiddled around with it for a bit, but couldn’t get aything to happen¹. I rushed back inside, called by boss and worked the rest of the from home via the corporate VPN.

After work, I called the dealership but found out the service department closed an hour before I called. I talked to the salesman who sold us the car and he suggested calling the VW roadside assistance 800# to have them tow the car out. I called them up, waiting on hold for several minutes and then got to talk to *mumble, mumble #1*. He had me go out ot my car and try several things to get the car out of park. I was just nearing the end of his instructions when the battery in my phone died. *grumpf*

I tromped back up into the apartment and called back on a wired phone. Again I had to wait several minutes and then I got to talk to *mumble, mumble #2*. I explained what was wrong and what I’d done so far. He gave me the complete instructions and I wrote them down. Then I set down my phone and ran outside to try them. Success! I could now get my car out of park! Before I ran back inside to relate my success, I turned off the car and tried starting/shifting normally. No luck, that was still screwy. I went back inside, picked up the phone and… And nothing, all I got was dead air. *double grumf*

I called the roadside assistance a third time and once again had to wait several minutes for the privilege of talking to *unidentified pissy man*. This guy never gave me his name. I told him everything that I’d been through and the resuylts of their procedure for getting the car out of park. I asked if I was supposed to be ok now, or if I still needed to get it to the dealership? He grumpily answered that “of course I needed to get it to the dealership.” All this around, though not entirely their fault, was not exactly making my evening any better.

Today, I called the dealership and their receptionist was waaaaaaay to gorram happy for 7:45 AM. Fortunately, she quickly transfered me to their service department. And they answered the phone with a “Good Afternoon”. While time is relative and there was a period in my youth where I always used “Good Morning” as a greeting that was high school for crying out loud. Still, she could have just been tired by the early hour of the day, so I didn’t go off on her. I explained my problem and that the roadside assistance people had given me a procedure to get the car out of park. She said since I could technically drive it; their first opening to have somebody look at the car is next Monday. I made the appointment, but it left me feeling very disappointed. I think if this is the average level of customer service I get from them then when we replace our other car, it’s not going to be another Volkswagen. As much as I like driving the car and as good as their sales department is; if the rest of their team is lacking in customer service then it’s not worth it.

Or I could just be grumpy from having to handle all this so flippin’ early in the morning.

¹ Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. All I did appeared to make things worse. After my fiddling with it, the EPC light came on. Though after following the instructions from roadside assistance that light went back out.

5 Comments

ken says:
June 20th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I remember when Adam’s car died on Melrose, and he was stuck by the side of the road in “Park”. He couldn’t get it to shift out of park because the battery was dead.

That, to this day, remains one of the biggest, stupidest engineering flaws I’ve ever heard of. And apparently it’s still present in many cars.

I’ll be interested in finding out what caused your lock-up.

Reply to this Comment
Mark says:
June 20th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
It’s definietely not he battery in my case, as my lights, radio, etc… are all working. I did some searching last night online but wasn’t able to find much information matching up to my specific car and problem. Still from what I did see out there it sounds like the sensor might be dead or dying.

Reply to this Comment
michelle says:
August 31st, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Do you remember what you had to do get the EPC light to turn off?

Reply to this Comment
Mark says:
August 31st, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I think the EPC light turned itself off after I got the Golf out of park, but I don’t remember clearly. It could have been the dealership also fixed whatever caused that while they had the car.

Reply to this Comment