First off, this has been 15 months in the making, deciding whether or not to write a review. After 15 months, STILL extremely dissatisfied with Subaru and specifically how I was treated by Reynolds. Would give no stars if I could.
Dealer Maintained 2004 Forester XS 4 cyl, bought it new. Followed all maintenance notices/advice/recommendations/recalls from dealer. Never missed one. Driving back from vacation (serviced right before vacation), wiper fluid wasn't working, got home and the electrical lead to washer reservoir pump was not attached. Was disconnected for service, not reattached. Come on! Air Conditioning clutch went out, they cleaned it, never got it working quite right. Eventually replaced it, never quite right, didn't cool well at all after that always intermittent cold/warm air, perfect on hot days.
Head developed external coolant leak at 170K or so, 8 years old. Was $1600-2000 to fix. Was told it would take a few days, got it back in less than half the time. Surprise! Problem was that now the car had developed an oil leak, never leaked in entire life. Taken back to dealer, work performed no charge to fix. Keith stated that they had reused a particular seal. I was floored, should have been new/replaced for what I paid. So they completed the work with a new seal, no charge. Why be cheap and not replace all applicable seals, wouldn't think there would be any question about not reusing seals?
Fast forward 12-24 months. Driving on highway. Car hydrolocked. Check oil res, full beyond capacity (coolant in oil), head gasket blown. Talk to service dept, $2,600 for them to diagnose, possibly another $4,500k to fix the engine. So $6,100 to repair and drive an 11 year old car with about 200K on it? This was all after car was in for $1,000+ exhaust work 2 days prior to blow-up. Stated this fact over the phone to Keith, was told "Ahhh I've been waiting for this. Look it was catastrophic, sudden failure...." Did not come off as very friendly at all. It had also been in for regular service fairly recently before the exhaust work. (Isn't customer always right, don't they want return customers?) Was told that I should talk to sales, they could probably give me a break seeing how it was dealer maintained and I just had it there for the $1,000+ exhaust work. Called the dealer, spoke to salesman, explained situation, took him HOURS to call back. I called numerous times to see if any movement on what can be done to incentivize me to purchase another Subaru (Subaru Love), was told by salesman that he was waiting for owner to be back. Finally contacted me offering me $800 credit towards purchase of new car. Slap in the face. Clearly the sales and service department did not want me back as a customer. Last time I spoke to them I stated that I was dissatisfied and would NEVER buy another Subaru again. Now a proud owner of a Ford Fusion, it has been great!
I laugh at the Subaru commercials about "the most cars over 12 years old on the road" or whatever. Sure, as long as you don't mind a leaky head gasket on a poorly designed engine and have to plunk down $2k to fix, so that it could then catastrophically fail on you on the highway. Bottom line, spent $10K on dealer service/maintenance issues over the life of the car 11/2004-4/2015 which ultimately netted me an almost 200K mile paperweight. But at least I'm free of the Subaru Cult. Go Ford! read more