On Chrysler
From Edmunds comes this tidbit:
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Chrysler has decided to cancel its 7-year/70,000-mile standard powertrain warranty.
The company judged that this package did not sufficiently entice customers, so it plans to divert the money and resources it was using to fulfill the warranty obligations toward other consumer and dealer marketing efforts.
Wait, let’s translate.
It was costing Chrysler too much to fix its customers’ cars under the 70,000-mile warranty, so it’s cancelling the program.
And what does that tell you about Chrysler cars?
Actually, I already knew. I know a guy who works for Texas Instruments, and he used to work in the division that made chips for auto makers. Each car company has a certain number of defective parts it was willing to accept. (Obviously you pay more for a guarantee of 3 defects per 100,000 than you would for 100 defects per 100,000.)
He said he would never buy a Chrysler because it accepted the highest number of defective parts. If the company was willing to accept bad chips, it was probably willing to accept bad other things.
Scooter says:
I must take just a momment to tell an old story. Chrysler sold me a wonderful car in 1995 with ongoing transmission problems. When the car reached 36,000 miles the problems continued. When I spoke to them on the phone, and asked for some additional warranty support for a known defect, the call center representative said “we just don’t give stuff away”. I explained that $28,000 was not in my mind giving anything away… I just expected the product to work. I have told this story hundreds of times (as promised that day on the phone) and I am still amazed, even today, when Chrysler owners speak openly about when their “first” transmission failed. I recently spoke to a mechanic that said Chrysler did fix the problem in 2001 (with a new type of technology to get the oil to the transmission before the car was placed into drive)… only after years of failures. In my case, the longer warranty would have just prolonged the decision to never drive another Chrysler product. If the quality was not engough of a reason, the poor customer service was the deciding factor. It gives me just a little more joy to share this story to a few more people.