Subaru Screw Over

You would think in this day and age of 2017 as a women auto repair places would not try to screw us females over just because we have a pair of tits.You may think that unless you have visited Subaru of San Bernardino.

I have a relationship with this dealership going back years, back to 2002 when I bought my first brand new car, my beloved Subaru Baja. I have owned 2 other Subaru’s since my Baja and to be completely honest I have never loved a car like I loved my Baja. When I bought my 2010 Subaru Outback I liked it a lot. My Uncle Larry gushed, 
“It’s a perfect mom car; perfect for a family!”

I countered;
“It’s perfect for camping! I can sleep in the back and my mountain bike fits inside!” My Outback was brand new and had at the time all the bells and whistles but it just wasn’t my beloved Baja, a car I bought new and put 130,000 miles on before trading it in.

When my horn broke a year after I bought my Baja, because, ahem I may have used it a bit agressivly, the service manager at Subaru of San Bernardino told me as soon as I brought it in, without even looking at it,

“Oh you live in the mountains. Squirrels must’ve chewed through your wires. That’s obviously why your horn is broken and it will not be covered under warranty.”

It’s been at least 10 years since that incident and I’m pretty sure this one particular service manager no longer works at Subaru of San Bernardino but yet last night Subaru managed to screw me over once again. When it comes to taking advantage of your customers I guess somethings never change.

When you make an appointment for a service you don’t expect to wait 36 hours for that said service to be performed, well I mean unless you are talking about our medical care system or Subaru of San Bernardino. The past two days I have spent stranded away from home in the same dirty sweaty clothes (Yea for 95 degree summer days in smoggy southern California!) not even having a tooth brush on me as Subaru of San Bernardino took their damn time doing practically nothing to my car but charging me a ridicules amount of money.

It was supposed to be a few easy fixes to my Subaru Crosstrek and I was thinking it would be done by early afternoon the same day, especially considering I had an appointment at 8AM, first thing in the morning when they opened. All I needed was for my rear windshield wiper indicator sensor to be fixed and for my heated seats to be repaired as they had not worked properly for the 14 months that I had owned this SUV.

I took the free Subaru shuttle 20 miles away to hang out with a friend for the afternoon and waited… and waited.

At 1PM I was starting to get annoyed as my car had been at the dealership for 5 hours. I called at one and the news was not good;  I had an appointment and they hadn’t assessed the situation yet? I was told they were having a issue figuring out the problem with the windshield wiper sensor and a technician would call me right back.

Finally at almost 4PM a technician called me to say that my battery needed to be replaced and they couldn’t assess the situation with the heated seats until it had a new battery in it. I had just driven an hour and a half to the dealership no problem, but now my battery wasn’t working to heat the seats? It sounded like a load of bullshit to me and that’s exactly what I told the technician. The other shitty part was the dealership was going to charge me $139 for the battery and $25 for the labor when I could get a battery for $104 dollars at Pep Boys and have my boyfriend install it for free.

But that would require, taking the shuttle back to San Bernardino, driving to Pep Boys, buying a battery for $104, driving back to Big Bear to have my boyfriend install it and driving back to Subaru of San Bernardino in the a.m. for them to assess the issue with the heated seats.

It was six or half a dozen to deal with this all myself or bend over and let the dealership charge me a ridiculous amount of money for a battery. Oh, plus the dealership still, at 4PM had not fixed the sensor yet and it would take them longer then the additional two hours until closing time to finish replacing the sensor, replace the battery and fix the seats.

So my car was held hostage over night. Luckily I could stay at my friends apartment in Rancho Cucamonga which was luckily walking distance to Target where they sell cold beer! Did I mention it was 96 degrees?

And I had a long day of being annoyed at Subaru of San Bernardino?

Long story short the next morning they called me to tell me that my heated seats didn’t work because my battery was to low to charge them (Which makes no sense to me, as the heated seats have not worked for 14 months and if I had a low battery for the last 14 months wouldn’t my battery be one hundred percent dead way before now?)

They also told me my heated seats were fixed and I didn’t try them because it was 95 degrees 36 hours after I had originally dropped off my car and got it back and I figured if the dealership said the heated seats worked, then the heated seats better fucking work.

So once I got somewhere where it was not 95 degrees (My mountain home) I tried the seats and guess what? They still won’t turn on! Not only that but the dealership didn’t even address the issue of the loud angry noise my Subaru makes every time I start it up! What a waste of 36 hours of my life taking my car to Subaru of San Bernardino.

Complete bullshit.