Helped a weary Subie traveler

[deadbolt]

I got a call yesterday from Dale Teague. He told me that he had a fellow I-Club member at his shop that was having wheel-bearing problems. He had been to his dealership 3 times to have the wheel bearing replaced. Turns out when they had put one of them in, they had damaged the hub. Miraculously, we had the hub in stock. I gave the guy directions to our dealership, and within a couple of hours he was back on the road to Carlisle. His name was Eric and he was driving a very nice black RS with 17" Team Loco's. If anybody up there sees him tell him I said hi, and I hope the rest of his trip went smoother.

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[M8]

hmmm. i wish i had service like that here in NJ. my MY00 has been laid up since the beginning of march awaiting a ABS wiring harness from SOA. apparantly there is only one little artisan elf in some secret island in the Pacific that makes it. well he's busy or some s**t like that. all my parts manager can do is shrug and make excuses that invariably involve blaming everyone that does NOT work for SOA. pretty discouraging, the damn pontiac sunfire i am enduring is the most discouraging part of all. if you don't mind; whats the inside scoop on the pathetic ineptitude of this big ass company? they do send parts and they have all been the wrong ones... how do you maintain good customer relations without being hijacked by their indifference to service?

[deadbolt]

One thing to understand is that there are always ways around things with SOA. For some reason, there are not enough parts to supply all the dealers in the US. It is not unheard of at our place to take parts off of an "in-stock" unit to help a customer out until the part can be gotten from SOA. When it is finally available, we get it, put it on our car, and make SOA reimburse us for the floorplan interest on that car as it was in a "non-sellable" condition.

Unfortunately, as a whole, most Subaru dealerhsips that I have come into contact with, and have heard stories about are very indifferent to their customers. Many are multi-point dealerships. (Example: Our closest competitor dealership is a Volvo, Chevy, Nissan, Hyundai, Subaru. Subaru is a small part of their sales, so they just regard them as "another car." We only have Subaru & Suzuki. Subaru is OUR car, accounting for 75% of our total sales. So we always TRY to go the extra mile for the customer. While it isn't possible 100% of the time, we at least try to get something arranged 100% of the time.

One thing that I have gotten most of our employees to realize is that, if you make 1 customer happy they MIGHT tell 1 other person. If you make 1 person mad, they WILL tell 10.

[Overtime]

M8...I love that elf comment. I got the same feeling when they were fixing my car...needed one little suspension piece to fix what was almost $5000 worth of damage to the driver's side. It took another week.

Deadbolt...you guys wanna open up a branch down in North Carolina? The dealers around here are all Chevy-Acura-Toyota-MG-AMC-Daewoo-Subaru. Whatever happened to one dealership selling one kind of car? Or two.

[N/A]

Luckily I bought my car from a great dealership. I had to drive an hr to get to one that had the car but in the end it was worth it. I left them with my cam seal leaking Integra and left there with the RS. I got the free oil changes also. Best part was they screwed up my order for my car and I got something different from what I had ordered. The owner came right out and made everything better. He gave me the car I had ordered and let me have all the extra stuff that was put on it that I never ordered. I still got it for the cost of the M/T no stereo no anything model I ordered. Even left with the extended warranty for free. Man the good dealerships out there are well worth driving to. I had a local dealership but they sucked and I wouldn't ever go there. besides what was an hour drive anyways? I love to drive that thing.

[M8]

thanks Deadbolt, it's good to know there are dealers like you out there. i don't want to mention any names (WORLD Subaru in Shrewsbury NJ!!!) but my dealership is the anti-christ. yeah i was pretty dissapointed to find this out, and i am considering notifying the vatican. when i tell them of the level of customer service i have experienced from other car brands they laugh in my face. it's mind boggling that they exist at all: they sell only subaru.

[Tkacik]

Was his name Eric Swain by chance? If it was he is a really cool guy.

[8Complex]

I could have SWORN that I saw something in my Subaru documentation when I bought my car that said if they had my car in the shop over 30 working days in a row then they were to take my car and get me a new one. I gotta re-look through everything cause I keep thinking aboot that one...

[Boxer4Racing]

Yes it was Eric Swain. He had been up to my shop before and we installed a Underdrive pulley on his car. His problems with the wheel bearing started about 3am and he ended up in the driveway of my shop around 7am. I got down to the shop about 8am and found him waiting on me. We had talked about his wheel bearing problem before and I told him the hub and bearing needed to be replaced to do the job right but the dealer he had been going to had not fixed it right and he was on his third wheel bearing. I had sold the rear spindles off the 99 RS that I have parted out so I had nothing in stock used that would help him out. I told him that it should be fixed for free by Subaru anyway. So I gave Deadbolt a call and as luck would have it they had the parts in stock. Eric left my shop around 9am and called me back at about 12:30pm. They had fixed him up and he was back on the road heading up to the Import show in PA. Just shows how much help you can get if you contact the right people.

Dale Teague (Teague's Auto)
http://www.teaguesauto.com

[MPREZYA]

I know where Dale's hub's went off that 99 . BTW I hope to have the conversion done here soon as I have been swamped with stuff. Thanks again Dale.
Rich

[deadbolt]

Overtime,
We ARE in NC my fellow tarheel subie brother!