Dealership service dept. didn't do what they said they did on my service order, what can I do?

Wow you went right to the top, didn't you? Here's what you should have done.

1. Talk to Service Manager

2. Talk to Dealership General Manager

My guess is it wouldn't need to go any farther than that.

Hold the phone here. You are making a serious allegation based on dubious evidence and you didn't even try to talk to them about it, you just went completely overboard and reported them to the BBB. Your lack of attempts to remedy the situation through normal channels will not impress them. I also suspect you are totally off-base, and here is why.

First off, does your car have alloy wheels or steel wheels with wheel covers? If it has the latter they could easily have rotated the tires but the fronts will still appear just as "dirty" from brake dust. Wanna know why? Because they don't rotate the wheel covers with the wheels. Those stay on the same corners of the car and that's the part that you see that appears dirty.

Secondly, I pull fluid reservoir caps dozens of times every day for inspection and I can guarantee you that 99% of the time after I put them back on I would have no way of knowing, just by looking at them, if someone had touched them recently or not. In fact as I was typing this I stopped, went back in the shop, pulled a few caps and put them back on and there is no visible evidence I ever touched any off them. There is simply no way to tell. I'm not sure why you think there is.

As for the air filter housing, I've opened up hundreds of those and the rust on the retaining screws doesn't magically disappear just because you apply a screwdriver too them. In fact, unless they were overtightened to begin with or overtightened when put back on there is again, no way to tell visually that anyone looked at them.

I'm not surprised that the old parts were not "offered" for viewing. 99% of my customers could give a damn about their old parts and wouldn't know what they were looking at if I showed them. In exceptional cases I do bring the parts up even if the customer doesn't care but most of the time I don't show the parts unless the customer requests to see them.

And the final reason why your case is exceptionally weak. How do you think shops make a living? By finding things on cars that need to be fixed/maintained. How exactly are they going to do this by NOT properly inspecting cars? It just doesn't make any sense.

I realise none of this is what you want to hear because you want to believe what you want to believe, but as someone who actually does this for a living I have to say, based on the available evidence, I think your going way overboard.

ASE Certified Automotive Service Advisor

Your first stop should have been going straight back and saying, "You didn't do what you said you did. I know because I'm not stupid. Now fix it at no charge, or I'm going to report you." If you weren't satisfied after that, then you should have taken the step of writing to the owner/president of the dealership and reminding them that people who are pleased with their service tell on average five people, whereas people who are not tell on average twenty people. Is he willing to lose twenty (potential) customers over $100 or ten minutes of work? Usually going to the owner/president of a dealer or franchise will solve any ongoing problems.

If things still persist, then go to the BBB, write a letter to the local newspaper describing your problems, and let everyone know you've taken all the reasonable and necessary steps. Jumping to the biggest, baddest solution right away can backfire in the end because the dealership can later claim, "We didn't have an opportunity to fix it." Just advice for the future. =)

Why didn't you go talk to the service manager at the dealership? That would have been the place to start.

go talk to the service manager and work your way up.....