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......

Sears Refrigerator Saga

So I recently bought a new refrigerator. It was delivered two weeks ago this past Saturday. It's really pretty, all shiny and new, much bigger than the old one, make crushed ice! Good times.

Not so fast. It only took me about two days to figure out that the fridge part was not cooling very well (they told me to give it 24 hours to reach maximum cooling once it was all plugged in and such.) The freezer, on the other hand, made the ice cream harder than bricks. So by Sunday night when I was still pulling room temperature beer out of the fridge, I knew something was wrong. I brought home my thermometer (from my classroom - bought it when the a/c wasn't working...) and I stuck it in the fridge. I left it in overnight and, well, after a couple of days moving the thermometer around and monitoring things, bottom line is that the fridge was not cooling below 45 at best, 50 most of the time. That is not okay. It is supposed to be 37.

I called service. After a recording, push this, punch that, speak Indian to this, I finally got a human who knew a few English words. I got a service appointment for this past Saturday (TWO weeks to the day after original delivery.)

Service guy shows up. He's nice, friendly, works on the thing for an hour. He checks the temperature, he says a vent is out of line. He aligns the vent. He checks it again. Then he replaces the thermostat. Checks it again. No go. He finally empties the freezer and takes out the back inside panel and decides that the problem all along has been a wire that was keeping the fan from turning. He moves the wire, puts it all back together, tells me it's fine and leaves.

I wait another 24 hours. I figure since he had the doors all open for just over an hour I need to give it time to cool back down. By Sunday I was back on the phone with service. Explained the deal, they can't come until WEDNESDAY of this week. *Sigh*. Okay.

Today I get home (today is MONDAY) and Sears is oh so sorry that I missed our service appointment and would I please call and schedule another one. WHAT!?

I call the recording again. Punch this, hit that, speak Indian, get a person who knows four words in English ("I can't do that".) No, no, Mrs. Austin, your appointment was today. I don't know what they told you. So sorry. We be there Thursday.

NO NO NO! I asked for a supervisor. She puts me on hold for two forevers with some godawful static covered piano concerto assailing my ears until she finally comes back on the line to tell me a supervisor will call me back. Oh sure. I'm going to hold my breath, okay?

Obviously the supervisor never calls me back. I called again after 2.5 hours. Punch this, hit that, get a woman that speaks ten words in English. She puts me on hold forever and finally a female supervisor comes on. I told her my story, (I was nice!) and she told me they can't come until Thursday. I told her then in that case they can pick this piece of garbage up and bring me a new one. "Oh no we can't do that. You have to have a minimum of four service calls before we can do that." Excuse me?

So at this point, Steve is all, "Come on, we're going to Sears!" Off we go. Now, the lady that sold me the fridge was so nice when I bought it. I liked her a lot. And she was there this evening when I got there. Actually, as we were walking in, we passed an official looking lady with an ID around her neck and she's like, "Hi, how are y'all tonight?" as we passed I said sort of under my breath, "Not happy!" Darn if she didn't hear me and she stops, turns around and is all, "What's wrong!?" I told her my deal. She was very sympathetic and nice. I told her I was going to talk to the lady that sold it to me because she had been nice I thought she could help me. She said, "Ok but if she doesn't let me know, and I will!"

So we find my lady, tell her the deal and she PROMISES to check it out. She gets printouts, gets on the phone, gets a manager (the same lady I met coming in), makes some calls, and by god, she's gonna fix it. New fridge coming Wednesday (as of now.) She said, "Look, you have a 90 day return policy if you aren't happy with the product - it says so on the back of your ticket." I'm not naming her here because I don't want to get her in trouble. But she promised me she will take care of it.

In this day and age when the economy SUCKS and stores and companies are folding right and left, struggling to stay alive, it blows my mind that Sears can be so cavalier about customer service. The folks in the store KNOW how competitive it is, but he folks in India at the call-center could care less. By the time I got to the store I was ready for them to pick the thing up and I'd get one from Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, anywhere.

If my girl comes through, I'm buying her a Christmas present and writing a letter to everyone from the CEO down to her immediate supervisor. Sears needs to know that they lose customers by poor service and poor response, but keep customers by caring about them as my girl seems to. Her attitude was all, "Oh no, we're going to fix this!"

Stay tuned for this space on Wednesday to see how it washes out!