By Ron Henningsen
Some shops shy away from warranty work, but when you have a good customer who has a vehicle that is covered by an extended warranty that was purchased when the vehicle was bought, especially if it was a used vehicle, you can hardly refuse. When this happens, especially if it’s a problem that occurs fairly soon after the vehicle was purchased, be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time dealing with or babysitting the repair process.
Warranty companies are in the business of making money, not being nice people or doing more in some cases than they have to. Although this is not always the case, it often is.
A customer recently brought into a shop a late-model Ford truck with a two-inch lift kit on it and slightly larger tires. The vehicle had a timing-chain problem and the warranty company demanded that the shop tear down the front of the engine and check the indexing of the timing chain before authorizing any work. Who’s going to pay for this? The customer was in a situation where if his problem wasn’t going to be paid for by the warranty company he would incur the bill for the teardown and inspection.
After the teardown and inspection and several days, representatives of the warranty company showed up and agreed that the timing chain had indeed jumped or was out of time. They then placed the situation under review and denied it because the vehicle had been altered with a lift kit and larger tires.
The warranty had been sold to this customer when he purchased the vehicle from a used-car division of an OE vehicle manufacturer with the tires and everything on the truck. After a lot of discussion the customer became very involved with the warranty company and the place where he purchased the vehicle, and the warranty company decided to pay for the entire timing-chain repair.
After that was done it was discovered that the turbo on the left side was also bad and needed to be replaced. Thus began round two with the warranty company. It wanted to know why this hadn’t been found before, what made it go bad and demanded teardown and inspection. Again, enter the customer. The customer returned to the dealership and fought for what he had paid for. A credit card number was then given to the repair shop from the warranty company. This ended up being a very expensive repair, more than $4,000 for parts and labor, but the fact is that the shop had easily spent 10-plus hours dealing with the warranty company and the customer. Who’s paying for that? In reality, no one.
Unfortunately, the customer got a bit of a runaround from the warranty company. He couldn’t blame the shop because he knew that it was trying to help him by presenting facts just as they were found, tying up a bay and an employee’s time in the process. The repair shop is now providing a warranty for the timing-chain installation and turbo, along with the diagnosis provided on the vehicle that no other obvious faults or problems are indicated.
Did they make money on this job? Sure. Did they make as much as they would have had it just been a straight repair? No, but the fact is that they did a service to the customer, a customer who owns several other vehicles, and have established themselves with this warranty company as an honest place that repairs vehicles based on problems that they find.
This is a shop that doesn’t take sides in a dispute and provides professional service at a fair price.
Ron Henningsen is technical editor for Undercar Digest and writes a monthly “Technically Speaking” column. It is reprinted with permission of Undercar Digest. For subscription information visit www.undercardigest.com.
