Tuesday, May 29, 2018

An Open Letter to Michael Manley and Sergio Marchionne at Jeep/Chrysler from an Unhappy Jeep Customer


Michael Manley (CEO of Jeep division)
 Sergio Marchionne (CEO of FCA US LLC)
Chrysler Headquarters
 P.O. Box 21-8004
 Auburn Mills, MI 48321

 Re: 2012 Jeep VIN ******

 Dear Sirs:

Today is day thirty-six that my Jeep Wrangler sits at the dealership waiting for a part to correct a left cylinder head problem which has been a known issue since 2012 as evidenced by an August 12, 2012 article in Auto Week magazine:

Chrysler Group dealers are replacing malfunctioning cylinder heads on a small percentage of 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engines.  
And a recent shortage of replacement heads means some customers have been without their vehicles for weeks, some dealers say. Chrysler is paying for their rental cars. A cylinder head covers the engine block, enclosing the cylinders and forming the combustion chamber.  
The engine powers most of Chrysler's best-selling vehicles, including the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Wrangler. By the end of the year, the 3.6-liter Pentastar will be Chrysler's only V6 engine in production, though a smaller-displacement version is scheduled to appear next year. 

 Key words here are “known issue” and “2012.”

 This is 2018. Why is there still such a shortage of parts for this issue that my vehicle is not yet repaired? And let me be clear: this is not the dealership’s fault at all. My dealer has made repeated calls to procure the part to fix this issue and has consistently been given the runaround. At one point we were told that the part had been released for shipment May 6, would take two days to arrive, and another two days to install, problem solved.

No part arrived. You’ve left this dealer, and certainly others,  in a very bad spot and you’ve left this customer hopping mad. 

Customer service is a high priority for me. Customers like to know that they matter and that they are appreciated. This is one of the reasons I love my Jeep dealership so much: they remember my name, they remember what vehicle I bought, and they take care of me, but clearly this level of concern stops at the dealer level. Corporate has lost touch with the little man. Where is Lee Iacocca when we need him?

When my attempts at resolution of this issue through phone calls to Chrysler failed, I finally reached out on social media to @JeepCares to try and seek resolution to this problem. I finally got a response through Twitter and we were assigned a “case worker” and a “case number.” This fellow has been utterly useless and has told us he actually has no real connection with Jeep/Chrysler.

Your customer service is outsourced? Seriously? Nothing screams “I don’t care about you” more.

At any rate, our caseworker never returns phone calls and his standard line when we are finally able to reach him by phone is “I was just about to call you!” It’s laughable now. He has no answers; why would he call?

We’ve asked our “case worker,” Danny, if a rental car would be an option or if a deferred payment on our bricked Jeep would be an option to try and make some sort of token amends here but both were shut down. We were told that we could get a rental for ten days for $35 a day and as for the deferred payment suggestion we were told he would put “a note in the file” which is the equivalent of no, we have learned.

We asked if the part could be expedited overnight to the dealership. Nope. He’ll “put a note in the file” and get back to us. Of course he never did.

Then we suggested that if the part for the engine isn’t available then perhaps Jeep would simply replace then entire engine since the car can’t run as is; we were shut down on that, too.

A quick check of comments and disgruntled customers online shows that I’m not the only person with this issue.

So here’s the gist of my problem in a nutshell. You’ve had my car for thirty-six days now with no solution in sight. Your customer service is non-existent. It is terrible. Jeep/Chrysler does not value my business one iota as is made clear by the terrible lack of communication we have received from your representatives. I do not appreciate being outsourced by corporate Jeep/Chrysler and I don’t appreciate the bind you’ve put your dealerships in by leaving them on the front lines with this.

I owe a few more payments on this vehicle and then my husband was ready to sign on the line for a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Can you give me any reason why he would want to do that now? I sure can’t see one.

 I respectfully ask that someone in this corporation pay attention to this problem, quit outsourcing your dirty laundry to some ineffective company, and get this vehicle fixed.

 Sincerely......

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