TDEinthe808
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2021
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 3
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Honolulu
- Vehicles
- Mach E Premium on order, Explorer, Audi Q5PHEV
- Thread starter
- #1
Aloha, friends. Longtime ”lurker” on these boards which I have enjoyed, but the time has come where I could use some advice.
The short version of the story is that my dealership banged up my MME (which they are fixing, so this is hopefully not really an issue) and are trying to pass along about $2200 in extra costs and add-ons I don’t want. My Dad’s a retiree so I’m buying on Z Plan, which they said they honor, but it’s not really Z Plan pricing If they’re charging me $2000 extra for things like stain protection and purification (whatever that is) and refusing to honor Z Plan’s cap on doc fees. Any thoughts on how to proceed?
For those interested in the full backstory, I reserved a Premium in January 2020, ordered in July, it came in in early March. So far so good. I stopped by the dealership as soon as it came in to check it out and get some pics. A few days later I went to the dealership to get a trade-in quote on my explorer, figure out what my financing options were, and of course take it for a test drive. The test drive was great but when I came back (salespeople don’t ride with you during covid) one of service techs noticed a big scrape on the front left corner. After a bit of confusion we quickly concluded that it was too big for me to have done on my test drive without noticing it (also, it appeared to have been done by someone reversing, which I didn’t do). They asked if I still wanted the car, I said yes, but that my expectation was that it would be pretty much good as new (order new parts if you have to, don’t just buff it and touch it up... plus there’s electronics and sensors in the area, hard to tell if they were affected).
So they sent me a cost overview but the conversation really turned from cost and financing to the timeline and quality of the repairs. Fast forward a month because in Hawaii it takes forever to get parts and paint shipped in and repairs are almost done. We pick up the conversation about the financial end of things and I see there’s a $3000+ line item for fees. What’s in that, I ask? Well in addition to things I’d expect like registration, there was about $1500 for some stain protection package and $500 for an anti-germ and bacteria package. I said no thanks to those and please fix your doc fee, and they basically said “too bad, these dealer-installed options are not really optional at all.” (FWIW these fees were in the original estimate so it’s not like they just added them on as a means of trying to recoup their insurance deductible.) So that’s where things stand, Dad reached out to the Z Plan people but hasn’t heard back yet. Any other ideas? I kind of want to walk away on principle but don’t want to wait another year for the car (which was every bit as awesome as I had hoped) when I reorder from somewhere else. They’re not required to honor the Z Plan, but they said they would, and it’s shady of them to take the order believing they could just soak me with other high margin add-ons because they feel like there’s not enough margin in the Z Plan for them.
Mahalo in advance for any bright ideas you may have.
The short version of the story is that my dealership banged up my MME (which they are fixing, so this is hopefully not really an issue) and are trying to pass along about $2200 in extra costs and add-ons I don’t want. My Dad’s a retiree so I’m buying on Z Plan, which they said they honor, but it’s not really Z Plan pricing If they’re charging me $2000 extra for things like stain protection and purification (whatever that is) and refusing to honor Z Plan’s cap on doc fees. Any thoughts on how to proceed?
For those interested in the full backstory, I reserved a Premium in January 2020, ordered in July, it came in in early March. So far so good. I stopped by the dealership as soon as it came in to check it out and get some pics. A few days later I went to the dealership to get a trade-in quote on my explorer, figure out what my financing options were, and of course take it for a test drive. The test drive was great but when I came back (salespeople don’t ride with you during covid) one of service techs noticed a big scrape on the front left corner. After a bit of confusion we quickly concluded that it was too big for me to have done on my test drive without noticing it (also, it appeared to have been done by someone reversing, which I didn’t do). They asked if I still wanted the car, I said yes, but that my expectation was that it would be pretty much good as new (order new parts if you have to, don’t just buff it and touch it up... plus there’s electronics and sensors in the area, hard to tell if they were affected).
So they sent me a cost overview but the conversation really turned from cost and financing to the timeline and quality of the repairs. Fast forward a month because in Hawaii it takes forever to get parts and paint shipped in and repairs are almost done. We pick up the conversation about the financial end of things and I see there’s a $3000+ line item for fees. What’s in that, I ask? Well in addition to things I’d expect like registration, there was about $1500 for some stain protection package and $500 for an anti-germ and bacteria package. I said no thanks to those and please fix your doc fee, and they basically said “too bad, these dealer-installed options are not really optional at all.” (FWIW these fees were in the original estimate so it’s not like they just added them on as a means of trying to recoup their insurance deductible.) So that’s where things stand, Dad reached out to the Z Plan people but hasn’t heard back yet. Any other ideas? I kind of want to walk away on principle but don’t want to wait another year for the car (which was every bit as awesome as I had hoped) when I reorder from somewhere else. They’re not required to honor the Z Plan, but they said they would, and it’s shady of them to take the order believing they could just soak me with other high margin add-ons because they feel like there’s not enough margin in the Z Plan for them.
Mahalo in advance for any bright ideas you may have.
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