Desert Audi just called me, and will pay for the repairs.
Personally, I think this is absolutely above and beyond anything that needed to be done on their part.
So, here’s my new recommendation, anyone in or around the Las Vegas area, wander into Desert Audi, they are way out on Sahara and Jones, across from Nevada Power, test drive (and possibly buy) a car from them and make sure to say that you are there because of Skip’s service.
I feel like half my blog has been posts about my car.
Skip, Service Manager of Desert Audi just called to get the information on who I spoke with at Audi Customer Relations. As I said in the post before, Skip is a very nice guy, and I think he’s certainly going to put some effort into this.
I’m also, this afternoon, going to call Barrier Audi and see if Kevin, who was always the greatest service rep I’ve ever worked with, will also call on my behalf.
I consider this to be a rather important issue that I plan to stick with. I am confident that I am in the right, and willing to invest a fair amount of my time because I really don’t like to be wronged.
I just submitted the following to Audi Customer Relations via a web form. I was not certain if my complaint would get lodged as including that I will not purchase another Audi.
“I wanted to clarify exactly why the only partial coverage of a $258 repair is enough for me to flatly say that I will not purchase another Audi. It is not the actual cost of the repair in this case, it is that the problem started under warranty. Due to circumstances, specifically that I moved and put 1000 miles on my car in a day, bringing me to 50,100 miles when I arrived in Washington.
So, what is at issue is that I do not have faith that in another 2-3 years, were I to purchase another a 2006 A4 as was my intention, I would receive reimbursement for a similar issue. Specifically that if I developed a problem and a start of diagnosis was begun under warrant, but not completed, and this turned out to be, say, a $10,000 repair that this would then not be covered or only partially covered as the case here was.
This has, unfortunately, been a very low point to end on for what I had considered otherwise to be fairly good warranty support from Audi, and for which I had recommended Audi on the basis of. I am sorry that this is how it went.”
Audi has decided as a token of “good will” to split the cost of the repair 50/50 with me.
I have lodged a complaint now that this is a ridiculous joke that will prevent me from replacing this car with a 2006 A4.
So, here’s the whole problem. Starting under warranty I began to have intermittent problems from the lower right front speaker. It would cut in and out, produce static, and eventually it started doing really loud popping sounds.
The first repair was an Audi bulletin concerning rattling of that speaker. Lacking anything else, Desert tried this. It did not fix the problem. Desert then replaced the speaker, this is when the popping started happening. Coincidently this is also when I moved back to Washington, a 1,000 mile trip bringing me to 50,100 miles. About 2 hours into the trip the problem stopped. This was in December.
2 weeks ago, the problem was back. Took it into Overturf here, they decided that it could be interference from the upper speaker since they were paired up.
Next day, the left speaker cut out, was a bit after 5, but I tried to call anyway to get them to cancel the speaker order. (I try to be at least friendly about these things). Called next morning to get them to cancel the order and schedule an appointment. Which, well, happened to be this morning.
Given that it was both sides, they looked immediately at the stereo and called me at about 9:30 this morning with what the problem was, and news that Audi was not going to cover it under warranty. I asked them to put it off while I called the previous dealership that had been working on it, and Audi Customer Relations.
Desert Audi, who had started work on the speakers that it should be covered. Customer relations thought it would be a maybe and they would get back to me today or Monday. Overturf called back, having gone to the regional field representative’s office and gotten an agreement on the 50/50 split. Overturf called me and gave me the news.
According to Bruce, my new Customer Advocate, he was going to personally call me to tell me one way or another. Since it wasn’t him that called, I called Customer Relations and found out that this was not the decision that they had come to, but would likely stand anyway now. Bruce would call me back later with more information. However, if they came back as fully covering it, they would reimburse me even if I had Overturf install the part now. (I pressed this issue)
I called Desert Audi again, the service manager there had seemed certain that Audi would call him to ask about the problem and he could explain things like me moving at the edge of warranty and the steps they had taken, etc. They hadn’t, he figured in the next hour and he’d get back to me when they did. Skip’s a neat older fellow, was always friendly when I was in there.
Called Overturf and told them to go ahead and install it, I’d pay half today and we could sort out if I’d get that reimbursed later. I should have my car back about 2pm regardless.
Now, my total cost as it stands now will be about $150, which is very little in the scheme of things. So, why did I lodge a complaint stating I would not purchase another Audi because of this? That’s simple.
What if this had been a $10,000 repair for an issue that started at the end of my warranty but couldn’t be diagnosed before the warranty ran out? That’d be a pretty good hit to the bank account. A person gets a vehicle with a warranty because they expect the company to stand behind the vehicle for anything that happens during the warranty period. Quite simply, this issue happened during the warranty period but could not be fixed before it was up. I see no reason that it should not be fully covered, whether it is $100 or $10,000 at stake.
I will on all future car purchases demand, in writing, from the car manufacturer a statement to the fact that any issue that comes up under warranty will be fixed to my satisfaction, even if my warranty expires during the repair process.
I’d ask everyone to e-mail Audi about this, but, it seems they don’t publish an e-mail address. So, I guess this is a vent/buyer beware post.
So, Go here for 33 free itunes songs for testdriving an A3. And, feel free to indicate to the dealer that while it is a nice car (I haven’t driven one yet, I’ll go do it today and post about how wonderful a car it would be if I was getting another Audi) you have a friend named John MacDonald who is dissatisfied with Audi’s failure to completely cover an issue under warranty and can not purchase an Audi because of this.
Dunno, it might work *shrug*.
At any rate, had I not moved, Desert would have found the problem, the stereo was the next component they were looking at. If I hadn’t moved, I wouldn’t have put 1000 miles on my car in a day and gone 100 miles past the warranty expiration and none of this would have even been an issue. Oh well. Too bad for Audi I guess, I was drooling over that RS4 debut video I have too and had high hopes for the 2006 A4, actually had 2 separate dealerships with notes to call me as soon as they came in. C’est la vie.
I get to hitch rides today. I’m not really a fan of getting rides.
Going to see Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at 11:59 tonight. Going to get picked up around 10:30. I do believe this is why I got 11 hours of sleep last night, somehow I knew that I would need it even though I planned on seeing the movie this weekend.
No, I haven’t written any reviews for MMORPGs yet. Too busy. Maybe this weekend.
I’ve played a fair number lately, meant to review them.
Matrix Online I generally agree with this one.
“The many experience changes add insult to injury. Also, there are many bugs in the missions such as NPCs that will not register an objective complete or doors that cannot be opened. This forces players to abort even if it’s the last leg of the mission.” — specific reason I quit.
I go through life with cold feet, in the most literal sense of the phrase. My circulation is rather poor and I’m hypotensive (that’s LOW blood pressure for the uninitiated).
I have learned to live with cold feet, I consider it the normal state of affairs. I take my socks off because somehow they manage to make my feet colder. I wear slippers sometimes, but this really doesn’t help either. I’ve learned to accept my cold feet.
At the moment, I can not sleep. This isn’t an unusual state of affairs, but tonight I can’t sleep because my feet feel like they are roasting alive. I can’t actually recall this being the reason for an inability to sleep before. I don’t know how to deal with it and it’s 5am. The day is pretty well shot I have to think. Which is too bad, I was hoping to put in quite a few hours studying math so I do not have a repeat performance of this past Wednesday… although, I don’t think that was entirely from lack of study. It was a long hard day with too little sleep before it, prior to leaving for class I was actually quite confident that I had mastered everything there was to know about sine, cosine, unit circles, reference triangles, etc. Ha. I’m dreading how poorly I may have done on that exam. What’s funny, is I don’t even know if I did it right or not. Those were also new concepts for me, in math that is. In English I never have a clue if I’ve done it right.
I’ve diverged a bit from my discussion on my inability to sleep. I also am having difficulty clearing my mind of thoughts. This, unlike the overly warm feet, is not new, but very rarely gives me a significant problem. I like to think, one of the things I consider myself to be quite good at.
I wish the trains would stop making that awful sound, I think the engineer is attempting to play a melody using only the whistle.
Tonight, the thoughts just won’t go away. Thoughts on all kinds of subjects. I try not (this being a blog entry) to ever go into detail on anything that I think about that really matters, and I don’t plan to change that. However, some of the more English (this might be a journal entry) related subjects are future journal entries. I’m a bit behind for lack of anything decent to write about, but I’m considering doing some stories. Nothing terribly good, mind you, but just something to waste 10 minutes a day writing on. I’ve got a half decent sci-fi universe stuck in my head that could be useful fodder, and even a medieval fantasy universe. Despite my rather strong dislike of writing, I actually have always wanted to explore them a bit outside my head.
This might be a decent chance, or, possibly, when it is not 5:02 am I will think differently and never do it. But, at least talking about doing it has given me something to write about other than my essay on destroying the world, teaching second languages, or I thought up a new thesis an hour or so ago. It’s not like we are graded on how convincing our arguments are, or if our thesis was actually put into play it would affect mankind for the better. So I thought thus: One legged twins bearing upon their forheads the birthmark in the shape of the elephant should build shrines to the pine needle to preserve my 3rd cousin’s belief in it being sacred to the 27th century.
It has a ring to it.
It was a dark sage… er age, well, the
color of the sage doing the speaking here is of little merit, but the
age, I can assure you was dark.
John MacDonald
ENG 101, 1:50
SAB – Final
A
Treatise on a Glass of Water
At first thought, a glass of water is one of the
simplest concepts of our society. A container of
glass or plastic in which an amount of water dwells. With everything
that is crammed into the life of a student, few have time to truly
admire this simple item. One might also just say that I’m crazy and
have weird glasses.
John MacDonald
English 101, 1:50pm
SAA – Final
The
Purple Pen
Some time ago, lost in the mists of my memory, I had a minor
accident. It was in the early morning hours, and I am sure what I was
thinking of seemed important at the time. I caught my foot on the leg
of a bookshelf and thought nothing of it. I finished my task and went
to sleep.
Blah.
Overturf today desided to replace all the speakers on the right side. I figured this was great and they were confident it would fix the problem.
Driving home today, the left front speakers gave up. No static, no popping, no sound…. oh, and Overturf closes at 5 so I can’t find out until morning if this is warranty or not. I will argue vehemently that it is.
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