Grand Jeep Cherokee Laredo 1999 - letter sent to DaimlerChrysler

# 7 for April 20, 2002

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on April 19, 2002:

From: Wolfsfrontier [Email User]

RE: Grand Jeep Cherokee Laredo 1999 - letter sent to DaimlerChrysler

Letter I send to DaimlerChrysler (MI) and Daimler in Germany! To Whom It May Concern: I’m writing this letter to bitterly complain about the way loyal customers are treated by DaimlerChrysler’s customer service in Auburn, Michigan (USA). I was born in Germany but live in the United States for quite some time now, that’s why I’m writing this letter in English to better explain my problem. Firstly, I would like you to know that since I can remember, my entire extended family are loyal Mercedes Benz owners and I cannot even count how many Mercedes Benz we had in our family over the years. My first car was a 1965 220 S and over the years I owned 190D, 200D, 230, 300D’s. I also had two Jeep Cherokee Sport. In late November 2000 we bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo because my wife wanted a SUV. Since I knew that Daimler took over Chrysler, we considered the Jeep based on my past experience with Mercedes and the excellent customer service I always received in Germany and Mercedes Benz in general! Well I guess Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore (Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz), meaning I think have to get used to the insulting, incompetent and almost borderline fraudulent Dealerships and customer service your company provides here in the United States! To make this fiasco short, here are the facts: From the beginning we noticed a slight humming noise every time we drove on the freeway. It sounded like it was coming from the transmission or in that area, but it was hard to pinpoint because of the normal noise you get while driving on a freeway here. I ask the mechanic at the dealer we bought the car from if he could check it out and he told me that this is “normal” because it is a SUV. This was the first disappointment about the vehicle, especially after we paid $34,000.00 for that car. Well, we lived with the noise thinking it was normal but we had to take a break every two hours while traveling to get rid of out headaches caused by this underlying noise. We then sold our house and moved to Valencia, which is 50 miles away from our old place. There is one Jeep (Valencia Jeep and Dodge) dealer in town and the next one is 25 miles away. It is not a 5 star dealer, very small and I used them only for a couple of oil changes. Regular maintenance was done by an independent shop, like oil changes, replacement of the belts, transmission fluid and filter, rear end oil change and so on. I can provide records for that! At around 15 or 16 thousand miles, my wife went to Valencia Jeep and asked for a mechanic to take a test drive because the noise got very bad. The mechanic took a spin around the block and stated he couldn’t hear anything abnormal. Frustrated she declined the scheduled oil change and left. We just kept on living with the noise and shortly before our warranty expired we took a trip to San Francisco which turned out to be a nightmare drive because of the noise getting unbearable. Upon return from the trip, I think there were 50 or 60 miles left on the warranty I drove to Valencia Jeep and told the service person that I wanted to have this same problem again documented before the warranty expires. Nobody seems to care about it! How can a new car make a loud humming sound on the road and no one is concerned?! Of course my warranty expired, the car was screaming every time we drove on the freeway (for some reason it was not that obvious in city traffic). I again went back to Valencia Jeep and there was a new transmission mechanic who took a 5 minute drive with me and told me immediately that my rear end is completely gone. What a surprise, oh, what a wonderful and magical world of cars, mechanics and dealers. Nothing wrong with the car, the sound is normal because it is a SUV, we can’t hear anything??? May I break out in hysterical laughter? To make it absolutely clear and that’s beside the warranty issue, any rear end going completely out after 43000 miles on a $34,000.00 car is a joke! I think it had a faulty rear end right out of the factory and doing research on the Internet it seems that I’m not the only one who had this problem with a 1999 Grand Jeep Cherokee Laredo 4x2. To top it off, my “Basic Lease Care” package, which we paid almost $400 for also expired. Stupid me, not to read the 500 pages of small print related to the purchase of this vehicle and the service contract. There was plenty of time to tell this fact to us since the dealer try to sell you every bell and whistle for 4+ hrs before you can drive off the lot. How in the world can “oil change coupons” I paid for with my hard earned money expire? We are not talking about extended warranty coverage for parts and labor, we talking about idiotic little Oil change coupons. Don’t you feel a little ashamed about yourself to rip-off customers like that? To give nothing for free, collect almost $400 and then design them so that they expire? I called the customer support phone number in Michigan and tried to address the Service Contract issue and just gave up, to even make an attempt to address the rear end issue with the person who answered the call is futile. I don’t know where you hire your staff from but to me, this “lady” was either on a “prison to work program” or from the (“not suitable for public view”) league? I have never, ever, been talked down to in this kind of demeaning manner by any customer service person. You may want to consider assigning her to service and warrantying claims requested by gang bangers. Also, according to this “lady”, “Chrysler” is not DaimlerChrysler and she doesn’t give a hoot that I am use to much better service from Mercedes Benz in Germany. “She” also proceeded to educate me that I am in the USA and not in Germany. I am glad that she reminded me about that because until then I thought I bought a “Russian UAZ-2966” SUV and had to endure U.S.S.R customer service. I of course I hung up on this person and after beating my head against the wall a couple times, I made another attempt to reach someone educated who would at least listen to me. I reached Jason at extension 4297 and finally got a human being to talk to even though I don’t agree with his actions regarding my claim, but I know that he has to follow your insulting customer service guidelines. He gave me several options all of them of course with me holding the short stick (look at the file in the computer to get the details). I finally agreed to have the rear end fixed at Valencia Jeep ASAP because I was afraid that the rear end would lock up on my wife while on her 65 mile commute to and from work, causing a severe accident. Besides that, I of course care about the safety of my wife and any other person on the road, which I can hardly say about DaimlerChrysler! Jason acted as an intermediary between me and Mr. (name omitted), Valencia Jeep’s “Service Manager”, which I would call a “Used Car Salesman”! He lectured me about “Customer Relationship” and other very important things, like he wants my business and there has to be a give and take on both side and other stuff I really need to know in my empty life, then quoted me the retail price of this repair which was about $1400. But out of the goodness of his heart (and maybe with a little convincing from Jason) he was so “gracious” to have the rear end fixed for $500. After calling Jason I knew that I got stuck footing the bill because DaimlerChrysler thinks that is a good deal and I’m on my own and Valencia Jeep is doing me“goodwill” favors anyway! Of course Mr. (name omitted) at Valencia Jeep immediately took advantage of this new found customer relationship and called me an hour later after the rear end work began to tell me about my front breaks where down to the last 10%. I was well aware of this since I already had scheduled to have them replaced within a week with Winston Tires in Newhall where I’m a very satisfied customer since almost 10 years and have all my brake, tire and shock work done. The cost for the brake job was over $60 more than what it would have paid at Winston tires. Thinking about my car being in their shop out of my control, the “convincing” speech I received earlier and considering myself a friend of Mafia style sales technique’s I just had to agree!?! Don’t you think? I don’t think the word entrapment would be too harsh or am I just a weak and frighten person afraid to say no and then see how my rear end work turns out? Well, I’m almost at the end of my story and if I had a say I would drive this car right to the junkyard! But my wife loves this “car” and there is no other car choice (sadly) we like from interior and exterior design. Maybe it would be fruitful if you could get one or two engineers involved in the overall design of this vehicle and tell the VP (or any of the other paper pushers) in charge that when you design a car, substance matters more than looks! Finally, I know that I am dealing here with a huge international company and instead of sending you this letter I should put this paper to better work, like use it in my bathroom because I think nothing will come of this. Sincerely, A former fan of Mercedes Benz and Jeep and a disgruntled Jeep Grand Cherokee owner who will at least voice his opinion and try to make sure that some people I know will never buy your product.