I live in the west end of Edmonton about ten blocks away from the Hyundai Dealership where I bought my 2011 Elantra from and where this all took place. What was to be a simple oil change, a squeaky foot rest and the replacement of two cracked door handles on my new Elantra has now turned out to be a three month, seven return visit marathon of frustration and stupidity. And still all is not complete. The oil change was completed without incident. The squeaky foot rest still squeaked even after I took the service advisor out to the car to show him exactly where the squeak was coming from just to ensure that there would be no question as to where the squeak was. I was told by that very service advisor that the squeak was gone yet when I picked the car up it was still there. After the second visit the squeak was still there but just intermittently. It was not worth arguing further. I’ll fix it myself. The replacements for the two cracked door handles had to be ordered in for they are not a commonly stocked part. This is where the stupidity really begins.
Three months later and now the correctly ordered door handles have arrived. I was asked to leave my car with the dealership so that the body shop would have the entire car to ensure that the door handles were painted the correct shade of white this time. Seven days later, I had to call them for an update; I came to pick up the car only to find that my white car is now black with dirt, half a tank of fuel spent, 200 extra kilometers and much noise coming from the rear suspension of the car. The service advisor asked me how I liked the new door handles and I could only say: I will let you know once I wash the car for it is so dirty. As for the noisy rear suspension I had the tech come out with me then to duplicate the noise. After doing so he suspected it to be either dirt in the suspension or broken bushings. To eliminate the dirt argument I asked him to put the car up on the hoist to clean and lubricated both front and rear suspensions. After this I then left, washed the car and took it home. The rear suspension was very noisy at that point. After inspecting the door handles I had noticed that I now had two door handles on each side of my car that did not match in color. Go figure!
The next morning I took it back in. This time I was cared for by the service manager. What a joke this guy was. As for the door handles that didn’t match in color his excuse for not repairing them now was at first the bottom line excuse. I crapped out that argument by telling him that his bottom line wasn’t affected due to it being the body shops error and not his. For some reason he failed to accept this and went into his second excuse and I quote: I replaced the two cracked door handles with new ones so I have done my job. Regardless that they didn’t match in color! I stopped him from talking then, pulled out my phone, turned on the video camera and then asked him to repeat that. Surprisingly he did. His conclusion was that the color of the new door handles was as close as it was going get to the original ones and I had to just live with it. I was 110% certain that his statement was incorrect. I already had an estimate of repair from another body shop so I knew where to take it for the correct fix.
As for the rear suspension noise! He tried hard to convince me that it was dirt. WOW! Holding my tongue while he rambled on I then got the chance to shut down his theory by telling him that his tech had cleaned and lubed the entire suspension the night before. He seemed a little miffed/baffled at this point. So he came up with another brilliant plan. That plan, as he called it, is to do an A-B comparison test. What is an A-B comparison test you ask? Well!!! “A” is my car and “B” could very well have been yours. He went inside the shop, removed the keys from another work order and started up that person’s car. It was the same model as mine. He then explained that we were to take each car out and compare the ride noise level. I was in shock. Maybe this is how my car got damaged in the first place. The plate number of that car is shown on this video so if it's yours then you sure have something to say to this dealership. After our little test it was a no brainer that “YES” my rear suspension was broken. It turned out that the rear struts and bushings needed to be replaced and the entire rear suspension re-adjusted. It must have been one heck of a joy ride to cause that type of damage.
We live in a world of “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda’s”. Maybe my experience will help others from living these words. It might also save you a boat load of money.
There is so much more that actually happened. Far too much to record it all here! Trust me when I say that you will be shocked! GOOD LUCK!
Click the following video link or copy and paste it into your browser window to see it for yourself: youtu.be/5hCSZYcajrY