The clutch repair on our 2009 Cascadia went smoothly until it came time to settle the bill. A small amount of other unrelated work (warranty work left over from another dealership's repair) was added in the service order. It too appeared in the charges despite the Service Manager's confident assurance they would call to arrange clearance from the other dealership for that work to be done at no charge since it was on warranty.
They couldn't seem to get a hold of anyone (guess their phone dialing fingers were broken) and refused to release the truck, essentially held it in ransom until this warranty work was paid for, all while dishing out hours and hours of bogus excuses. THE RUN AROUND and LIES were amazingly unprofessional, not to mention the unnecessary downtime it caused.
So we eventually paid the bloated bill and terminated all future use of this dealership. They lost one satisfied customer who was happy to pay over two grand for legitimate work over $139.10 of warranty work because they couldn't bother to make the call they SAID THEY WOULD MAKE and our service agreement stipulated they make.
Any wonder why Freightliner is in trouble????
IMMEDIATE UPDATE: To add insult to injury, the problem the warranty work was to repair still exists --- AS IF THE WARRANTY WORK WAS NEVER DONE. Unbelievable!
NINETEEN HOURS LATER, the warranty work is done, the bogus charge was credited back to us but any downtime was a total loss, Still pissed, I called the District Manager, Jeff Lane. What an idiot! Mr. Lane made it clear he could not care less. According to him whatever shake down a dealership pulls is okay --- "they are an independent franchise". As if we all don't know that the franchise made sure to cost us more in downtime loss than the bogus charge was while corporate looks the other way. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Wonder what Germany thinks of that? Just the American way of doing business??
From now on, we're spreading the word to all independent O/O's and small fleets: buy anything else since your truck will prove merely a great way to earn Freightliner some quick cash, legitimately or otherwise.
Do not use Chattanooga Freightliner unless you enjoy being taken to the cleaners.
UPDATE: Spoke with General Manager who responded to a BBB complaint we made. After nine yards of 'corporate speak' ever so patiently explaining a whole lot of junk we already knew, Darryl Dyer then said he was sorry while adamantly insisting that no scamming was involved. When I asked if he understood that is exactly what someone scamming would do, he had nothing else to say. Precisely as expected.
ANOTHER UPDATE: These scammers also tried to bill the carrier we are leased on to for the repair work WE PAID FOR. All while CEO Darrly Dyer is claiming they don't double dip. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. LOL Run from these people! read more