In any world of reality that is a gross generalization. If it were in fact true Mazda would be out of business. In all likelyhood, it is you who are the anomoly, and a noticeably vocal one at that. No critizism that, just I read many of your posting and they nearly universally diss Mazda customer service.

There are many many many many many many Mazda owners more often than not satisfied with (independent owned) Mazda dealership service and warranty work. I count myself among those.

 

You are correct, I am zealously attacking Mazda's service. I will be the first to admit it. I bought my car along with it's warranty and I expect Mazda to honor that warranty. Not to much to ask is it? To date they have not. Until they do I will be very vocal in my condemnation of there service. I am not saying that Mazda dose not have it's success stories but compared to the industry Mazda is the worst at providing service, this has been documented as I have previously pointed out.

It is also easy to say Mazda dose a good job until you have one of the issues which Mazda has chosen to ignore rather then fix. Once this happens, my bet is you would be singing different tune. Like wise if I bought a car that was running normally I would be far less vocal in my assault but I was one of the unlucky ones so hear we are.

 

I am not doubting your characterizations of your problems or your dissatisfaction, nor you right to be vocal - It's only your characterization that someone getting good service from an independent Mazda dealer is an "anomaly", when clearly that is not the case.

 

I just skimmed the thread, so I may have missed it, but - wouldn't this problem fall under the Lemon Law? I don't see why there would be any question about getting out of the lease.

 

From carlemon.com for North Carolina:
Any new motor vehicle other than a house trailer, provided that the vehicle does not have a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds or more. This includes pickup trucks, motorcycles and most vans.
4 repair attempts or more than 20 days out of service during any 12 month period.

2 years or 24,000 miles.

1) "Consumer" means the purchaser, other than for purposes of resale, or lessee from a commercial lender, lessor, or from a manufacturer or dealer, of a motor vehicle, and any other person entitled by the terms of an express warranty to enforce the obligations of that warranty.

^covers leases

 

I have talked to several attorneys and they say the one thing the dealers are good about is even if they replace the trunk bulb, etc. they list the problem a little differently which bypasses the Lemon Law.

An attorney I am good friends with is having a nightmare with her new Volvo and she cant even get Volvo to honor the lemon law.

The lemon law is very weak in NC. They are exceptions to what you have posted.

Mazda usually doesnt have my car for more than 1 or two days because they are not getting reimbured by Mazda NA.

I did receive a voicemail from the mediation person I have been working with today saying she want to see about putting me in another car. I dont know if she means another Mazda or what. I just want out of the lease and I dont want any part of Mazda based on my experience.

I will let you guys know what the mediation person says when I talk to her.

Dean

 

with this attitude ill bet u all 100 bucks he drives an automatic

 

This seems to be the only glimmer of intellegence in this entire thread.

 

The Mazda mediation person left me a voicemail just saying I had to return the loaner as they have repaired my car again. There was no explanation as to what was wrong.

Dean

 

I didn't talk but got a response via email from the mediation person as shown below. I really would have preferred that she was talking to the shop during repair instead of telling me to pick up my car even though she does not know the results. I have a hard time believing her statement that they would not release the vehicle if it wasnt repaired. They have done it numerous occasions. If they replaced the battery, that will buy a month or so.

I will not know until you pick up your vehicle, and I receive the documentation regarding the repair. The region office is closed currently so I will retrieve everything in the AM.



They would not release the vehicle unless it was repaired. Our Field Technical Engineer was onsite and involved in the repair.



Let’s regroup tomorrow as I stated earlier,

 

Dean, sell the car, take your lose and move on. You have shitty service in your area.

 

... not at all... Again (and you just don't seem to grasp this) Just like JD power, Consumer Reports bases their findings off of the consumer and not actual service reports. (Hench the name Consumer Reports).

You will never ever ever ever have an accurate report on the reliability of a vehicle based off of only consumers.

You will only have an accurate picture of a cars true reliability based off of service reports. And I only know of one regular un-biased, un-touched by consumer influence report, and it finds Mazda to be one of the top 5 most reliable vehicle manufactures for the past 5 years.

See you just don't get that the independently owned Mazda dealer has nothing to do with the Manufacture of the car. Ever see the line "all vehicles subject to Prior sale"... you find that on most auto dealers ads. Why?? Because they bought the car from Mazda (or Ford or GM or Toyota or Etc)... marked up the car as much as they could and sold it.

And as much as you want Mazda to cut out the crappy dealers, it would be like asking the Grocery Store down the street to stop selling Beer. The Beer manufacture (Brewer) only wants to sell more Beer... even if the grocery store is pouring the beer across the windows of the store. They don't care if the grocery store sells old and crappy beer, as long as it sells the beer. They don't even care if the grocery store sells the beer to minors. They just want to sell more beer to the grocery store.

Car manufactures are the same way. They don't care what the dealer is doing to sell the car or if the dealer is even selling the car. They care if the dealer is buying another car from them.

You gave your money to the Dealer... NOT TOO MAZDA. You didn't buy a car from Mazda. You bought a Mazda from Joe Crappy Pontiac/Ford/Mazda dealer.

But you just don't get that. I just don't understand why you just can't see the difference.

I know you don't think that is right, but that is the way it is. Denying that or hopeing that it will change, won't change anything. Buying the next Mazda from a different dealer will.

 

Yeah, sales do matter first. But don't you think the sales stem from something? Like reputation. And doesn't the brand's reputation depend on building sales...both initially and perpetually. How can you draw customers, new and existing, if your cars are up on racks in garages rather than on the streets?

Using your beer example let's take Old Milwaukee. Plain and simple the stuff tastes like **** and I ain't gonna buy it or drink it, even if it's given to me gratis.
Same as the beer that tastes like dishwater leaves a sour taste in peoples' mouths so does bad service at a dealer. That does affect the manufacturer because those people will forego buying that brand and eventually if there's enough dissatisfied customers the parent company suffers the consequences. Look at the domestic three. They were in it for the quick buck, make-as-much-as-you-can short term. Now they can play catch up forever to the car companies from Japan that held a superior philosophy.

 

I think by *buying* a Mazda car, I will give money to NOT ONLY the dealership, Im giving money to Dealership and Mazda.

If Mazda is not getting my money, I dont think Mazda will make cars anymore.

Like RG said , dealerships these days are getting dumber and dumber.

 

I understand your point and would even agree with you to a point. I would imagine most people can get decent service for easy to fix problem probably. It is when things get a little more hard to diagnose that Mazda's poor service comes into play. Mazda's general rule of thumb is to ignore difficult to diagnos issues like poor fuel economy. This is why Mazda is rated at the bottom and why some people with these type of issues are so mad at Mazda. So unless you have had these types of issues you'll never know how really poor Mazda is.

 

So now the people who own the cars and live with them don't really know what they are taking about. I own a 2001 subaru and the items that CR show as problem areas correspond well with what I have experience. Consumers are who buy the cars and live with them, I think there experience is a pretty good indicator for the cars quality.



What planet do you live on. Do you think that Lexus corporate would allow it's dealers to provide crappy service??? I know of a local Pontiac dealer that was shut down buy corporate. Tell me that you are not so foolish as to think corporate has no control over the dealers, please tell me this. Crappy dealers drag down the corporate image and only I fool would ignore this fact.

 

Yep. The BMW Idrive system is a classic example. BMW got bad bad ratings on both Consumer Reports and JDPower on RELIABILITY, because people could not figure out the Idrive system.

Since when does not knowing how to read the manual constitute a reliability flaw... well since JDPower and Consumer reports both had consumers complaining about the cars that had that system.

Well then I guess you know better... but then how can you justify so many bad dealers out there... by your suggestion there would be no bad dealers because a Manufacture would cut them off.

Yet by my explanation... hmm my explanation does justify why there are bad dealers that are not cut off.

Hey why don't you just sell the car, and leave the board if you are just that unhappy??? For how much you bitch and complain you would think you owned a GM.

 

Nope. The dealer has already bought the car from Mazda. Paid for it or financed it.

So, no... your money does not go to Mazda. The only way it might, is if the dealer turned around and bought another car to sell with the money that it got from you when you purchased the car.

But the dealer might buy something else entirely than a RX-8 with the money you gave him for the car.

 

not mazda, your local dealer

 

Im still giving money to Mazda, just indirectly. Not to mention other *directly* way, say, finance thru MAC ?

 

Mazda said the batter was low and for the second time in a row said they replaced the battery with a larger capacity battery.

The mediation team is no help at all and I cannot get the woman from the mediation team to call me back after more of the same.

Dean

 

the car has an electrical draw, most of this are in the stereo or the alarm, take the car to a good rotary shop and have an electrician look at it

 

The idrive has been universally condemned by every article and publication I have ever read. It is a very poorly implemented solution for the controls it replaced and has an adverse impact on your satisfaction with the vehicle. So I could see how some people would rate that as a defect.

More to the point, are you sure the poor rating was just because people were frustrated with poor engineering or was there also problems with the systems that the idrive controls? The owner of my company has his 7 series in the shop right now because the screen for the idrive when dead. Would he give the car a bad rating for the failed screen or the frustrating idrive? Also BMW's other cars, which don't have the idrive, are rated poorly also.

Your one example may have some impact but the fact that even BMWs with out idrive are rated poorly would indicate the idrive impact is minimal and the data is relatively sound.



This is the whole point of the discussion, isn't it? Manufactures like Lexus establish a standard and hold dealers to, in turn they are rate very well for customer service. Lexus dose it right. Now at the other end of the spectrum you have Mazda who dose not establish a level of excellent customer service. The dealers see that Mazda doesn't really care so service quality drops along with sales as has happened to Mazda. We get crappy service because Mazda Corp. and people like you allow it.


Well I guess if my arguments had as many holes as yours I might resort to this type of play ground strategy. Fortunately I don't like to stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and fool myself into believing that every thing is OK despite the reality of the situation. I like the car and I want Mazda to support it as the warranty states. Some people just won't accept crap while others will, I think we both know were we stand here.

 

The local dealer is Mazda. They are Mazda's first tier contact with the customer. Mazda corp. even states that they are Mazda's representative in the field.

 

Dean,

You might want to bring your car to a local repair shop you trust and have them run down the problem. Once it is fixed bring the bill to Mazda and see if they will pay it. If not take it to small claims court.

I know this is a pain but at least it will be fixed. I hope all you who are defending Mazda's wonderful customer service are reading this. This is what I am talking about, an obvious problem and Mazda keeps switching batteries in the hopes Dean will just go away.

Give me a break!