Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Lexus Shmexus PART II

When we bought the car, we were getting 21 mpg (according to the digital display in our luxury vehicle). Over the past 9 months, that number has slowly been declining. It is now at 17.6 mpg. Jared has also been noticing a rather disturbing increase in oil consumption. So we brought it in to have it diagnosed. They gave her an oil change, and filled 'er up, then told us to come back in 1,000 miles to see how much oil we had lost. When we came back, the oil wasn't even registering on the dipstick anymore (their oil changes are guaranteed for 5,000 miles)! They dug around in the engine and came back to us with the report that we should replace the short block (the heart of the engine) and that it would only cost us $9,500 (about how much we still owe on it)!!!

Now, hold up. This is a frickin' LEXUS that has 73,000 miles, and an impecable service history? You're serious? There is NO WAY the engine should be bad. We are not paying for that. You should, Lexus. You stand behind your name? Stand behind it now and deal with this. Their only suggestion was to call corporate Lexus and see what they would do for us. That call began the biggest game of pingpong (us being the ball) I have ever played. Jared called one guy and they would tell him he had to call this girl. He would call that girl, and she said it wasn't her decision and he should call this guy. Back and forth, on and on for three weeks now. Finally last week, Jared gathered names and phone numbers of managers and manager's managers. He made at least a dozen phone calls. Nothing. So we stopped by Lexus to confront them face to face. Once again, they told him it was not their decision. He did, however, finally find out whose decision it was, and called her. After three calls, and an email from the Maplewood service manager, this lady finally called Jared back and said they were reviewing the case and she would DEFINATELY call in two days. That was over a week ago. She has promised to call three times now, and has never yet called.

Somehow this blows just about everything Wikipedia said in the description of Lexus.
Reliablilty? What's that?
Dependability? I don't think so!
Customer service? YEAH RIGHT.

6 comments:

erin said...

Oh, no...
I don't even know what to say.
I'm sorry.
I know the story, but it seems so much WORSE in writing.
Perhaps you should post this on a Lexus website?
Complete with names and phone numbers...

-V- said...

Wow. I'm really surprised by this; I've always heard nothing but good. We had a similar experience with a JEEP Grand Cherokee, but came to find out afterward that pretty much everyone knew not to jump in that hole except us. Not so with a Lexus Shmexus. I'm sorry!

Joshua said...

WOW! I agree with Erin! This is silly! HOW is it eating up that much oil? I had an old Mazda MX6 that had 200k miles on it and it wasn't eating up THAT much oil! Sorry, guys. I will say this: if there is ONE GUY who would know what to do to fix it (either himself or know the right person) it would be Jared. At times like this ($ times) I find it the most difficult to trust in God, but also the most rewarding.

kristi noser said...

Bad block at 73K? I wonder how many times they have seen this before and are giving you the run-around to put you off.
Keep going up the ladder, and don't take no for an answer. Good job being the "squeaky wheel" so far.
GO JARED! GO NAOMI!

Jodi said...

Good luck! I hope your persistance pays off!

Cara said...

Broken cars suck. Enough said.