Bay Area Mod Friendly Dealerships

SuperDave

Power steering pump went out at 54k miles. Brought the car down to Tracy Nissan and picked up a rental Altima @ $25 a day. The next day they call me and tell me they've diagnosed it's the pump, and I need a new one, and that the part itself is $900, but they have to order it, and they have absolutely no ETA on when it will be in. With labor and everything else, I'm looking at around $1600 (plus rental @ 25 per day with no ETA on part availability). And that no, the drive train warranty does not cover a power steering pump.

So I tell them that's absurd, I'll pick the car up, order the pump myself elsewhere, and replace it myself. They talk me into ordering the part myself and bringing it to them and paying them labor only, and they'll take a few days off the rental car. So I say fine, and get them to throw in a free alignment since I needed one, and I figured they could do that while waiting for the part to come in.

My pump comes in that I ordered from Amazon prime for $250, I drop it off, and they get to work. I also had to get a new belt since mine was covered in power steering fluid, so I brought them that too, since they wanted $90 for a $20 belt.

About 9 days after initially dropping off the car, it's ready for pickup. I pick it up, and there's power steering fluid everywhere, all over the motor, radiator, frame, underside of the hood, and on my shift knob. Guy tells me they refuse to clean it because the chemicals they have will take the paint off. Reason one why I wanted to do it myself. The majority of my bumper clips are all broken, had to buy more and replace them myself. Reason two why I wanted to do it myself. Lastly, my steering wheel is all chewed up, like the leather, like a pit bull ate it or something. Guy says, oh yea, that's from our alignment machine. Bring the car back in and we'll "repair it". So I bring it in for leather "repair", and well, yea, it's still all chewed up, and there's liquid leather now splattered all over my interior. Reason three why I wanted to do it myself.

Don't even ask about the Murano we bought there with VDC and Slip light constantly on that we have a service warranty on that their tech's "cannot reproduce" after 5 visits, even though it’s on right now.

I still ended up paying about a grand for this shitty repair work which caused more damage than was originally broken, between amazon, Tracy Nissan labor, and the rental.

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