Herb Chambers Hyundai of Auburn - Service Center

Horrible Service, Wouldn't send my worst enemy here I was having issues with my 2013 Hyundai Elantra, which shouldn't have been happening with a fairly new car but that is a whole different issue. Anywa I was having issues with my 2013 Hyundai Elantra, which shouldn't have been happening with a fairly new car but that is a whole different issue. Anyways I dropped my car off Thursday evening for a Friday morning service appointment. I asked for the issues to be looked at, and also for them to help me out with the mileage reimbursement program, which offers you a gift card to reimburse you for some of your gas purchase. I called to check on the car Friday afternoon, and I spoke with Toni in the service department, he said he had no idea what was going on with the car and would get right back to me. Well I never heard back from anyone that day. I called again Saturday morning, Toni said to me" oh ya sorry I just left last night and totally forgot to get back to you" which I thought was very professional, anyways I asked about the status of my car, to which I was told that someone would be checking it in soon. So needless to say it sat there all day Friday and no one looked at it. So Saturday afternoon I called again and they had no idea what was wrong with it, just that they would need it until at least Monday to which I responded that I was starting a new job and could not be without a car the following week. Precisely the reason it was dropped off Thursday night, so after complaining about this and being told that I could not speak to a manager because there weren't any available, I hung up the phone, not more than 5 minutes later, Toni called me back, suddenly there was an issue with my car and I had brought it in with No oil in the car and they couldn't touch the car until I brought them documentation of all the oil changes I had ever had done in the car. Well my father is a mechanic and does the oil changes for me, so I don't have the dealer sticker in my window stating when the next oil change is do. So because they saw this, they decided to use this as an excuse not to fix my car. I find it funny that this was never mentioned the whole time the car sat there, and when I decided to call them out on this and complain about the issue, it was suddenly my fault why they couldn't fix it. I brought a mechanic with me all the way to the dealership to be sure my car had oil so I could drive it without any damage to car, and there was plenty of oil in the car. It was a completely fabricated story to try to cover up the fact that they forgot my car was there. Needless to say nothing on my car got fixed and I never received the mileage reimbursement that was supposedly taken care of when I was sitting there. This is the worst experience I have ever had with a dealership, I was horrified at the way the staff acts and "works" if you can even considerable it that since they don't seem to do much of it. I would not recommend this dealership to my worst enemy and I will not be buying a new hyundai in the future, in fact I am trying to get out of my loan with this hunk of junk as we speak. Good luck to you if you decide to give these people a try. Worst mistake I could have mad was to trust them. More

Svc. Dept. lack of communication & poor service diagnostics In regards to service department. Ever since I purchase the vehicle almost 3 months ago and purchased in good faith hoping everything was great and do In regards to service department. Ever since I purchase the vehicle almost 3 months ago and purchased in good faith hoping everything was great and done , I've been having this annoying wheeling or spinning sound inside the cabin like coming from the gauge section specially when accelerating the car. I have brought the car a few times and had left the vehicle at the service department for days at time to be diagnosed and ultimately fixed. According to the professionals, everything was thoroughly checked and that all component in and out seem to be in normal operation, so to say they couldn't find or target the problem in any of the appointments but indeed acknowledge the sound in the cabin. At the last pickup without success, I was told by the Service Department Supervisor that the problem was going to be researched and that other vehicle of the same standards were to be test driven to identify the probable linked and normal sound if any for this particular model. He promised to get to the bottom of the issue, to contact me and ultimately get fixed if it wasn't a normal behavior. A week after, since I never got the call back as promised, I decided to call him myself to inquire about the status of the situation. All I got was "I haven't gotten a chance to test drive one yet. As soon as I get a chance I will call you". At this time I mentioned that I needed this issue to be fixed and squared away before a Florida trip that I will be making. This was 2 weeks before the trip. A Week later still no call from the supervisor when I decided to go to the next in line service shop. As soon as I took the car in and since, three issues with the car have been identified. Unfortunately, since the process of getting parts delivered is also an issue, my trip had to be delayed when this could have been dealt with much sooner if the original service center had kept their word. This whole ordeal has cost me time and money, not to mention stress. My wife decided to call the dealer again to request if possible a loaner while the dealer is waiting for the part so that we can make our trip in time but all she got was attitude by the sales manager. We had purchased 3 cars from this dealer before and until now we never had a problem. I have no issues with the sales team. Great guys, specially Michael Cardozo and Tammi at the service department, she is great. Thanks you guys. But when people don't keep their word and don't address issues properly it creates serious misunderstandings. And still no call from the supervisor till this day. I really don't like doing this and find no pleasure on it, but this is really upsetting. More

I brought my car in for front end work on Tues 7/16. The service writer (Justin) noticed that I was overdue for a timing belt and some other repairs. Since the engine had 148K miles (all highway, FWIW), I a service writer (Justin) noticed that I was overdue for a timing belt and some other repairs. Since the engine had 148K miles (all highway, FWIW), I agreed to replace the timing belt. The next day, I received a call from Justin to inform me that the technician had noticed spots of oil on the floor of his bay, and saw some rot on the oil pan once he got the car in the air. So, apologizing for missing it earlier, Justin also recommended replacing the oil pan, which I authorized. Fast forward 2 1/2 weeks (during which promised phone calls to update me on the status of the repairs routinely never materialized and estimates of their completion were invariably wrong), I received a call on Weds 7/31 that the repairs were complete, but the tech wouldn't have time before he left for the day to make the "extended test drive" that he wanted to do, so my car would be ready for pickup on Thurs 8/1. When driving home Thursday night, the car stalled twice on the 15-mile ride, begging the question of how "extended" that test drive was. After stalling two more times on the way to work the following morning, I promptly called the dealership to report the issues. I was given an appointment to bring the car back in the following Tues so they could diagnose the problem. Monday night, on my ride home from work, I noticed a noise coming from the engine that sounded like the noise the playing card made when you put in the spokes of your bike's wheels as a kid. Fun in a bike, not in an engine. I pulled off the highway and called a tow truck to have the car brought back to the dealership. I called the dealership Tues morning to tell them of my adventures the previous evening and let them know that the car was there early for its appointment. The service writer told me that I would get a call back in a few hours, once they knew what was going on. When I did get a call back, Justin informed me that the engine had a "rod knock," and that the motor would need to be replaced, at a cost of $2400 for a used engine with 40K miles. He told me that the service manager had authorized a discount of $150, because it was "the right thing to do." When I questioned whether this had anything to do with the $2500 in repairs so recently completed, I was told that the timing of this problem was completely coincidental and had nothing to with anything they had done just a few days before. At this point, I called my ex-husband -- an ASE-certified mechanic with 20 years experience -- to sanity-check the story I was being given. When he heard that the prior repairs included replacing the oil pan, he confirmed that I was being given a song-and-dance to cover up for their mistake. From what I described to him, he was pretty sure that a clogged pickup tube lead to oil starvation in the engine, resulting in the rod knock now apparent. Armed with this information, I called the dealership back to see what their response was. I spoke to the service manager (Jim Pope), who insisted that they were in no way responsible for the problem, saying things like "when you open up the engine on a car with this many miles, you're running a risk of something going wrong", and "if the oil pan was rotting on the outside, it was rotting on the inside, so who knows how long the tube was getting clogged." When I proposed a compromise where I pay for the engine and they absorb the cost of the labor, the service manager said that he couldn't do that, but offered to discount the price to $1900, and would include moving over the new timing belt from the now-junk engine to the new-to-me one at no charge. I need the car to get to work and had invested so much already, so I felt I had no other option than to tell him to order the engine and authorized the work. If the oil pan rot was so pervasive that this clog could have been building up for months, as the service manager said, why did the tech not take out his flashlight and look up the pickup tube to see if this was actually happening? No one ever advised me that the oil system should be flushed because of these repairs -- I gladly would have paid an additional cost to avoid these catastrophic results. I took my car to the dealership (and paid the resultant premium on labor) because they are supposed to have the training and skills to provide superior service, but this appears to be incompetence at best and negligence at worst. After calling Hyundai corporate customer service to complain, I was advised to call the General Manager at the dealership to see what could be done about this situation. The GM was unavailable when I called, but I spoke to Tim, the (assistant?) sales manager. He patiently listened to my saga without being defensive or insisting on their lack of culpability, took plenty of notes, and said that he would talk to the GM in the morning. I just received call back from the GM, who is backing service manager in denying any possible link between previous repairs and catastrophic motor failure 3 days later. He is staying firm on $1900 price. Herb Chambers has 50 dealerships in the greater Boston area, and yet $1900 is the best price they can give me on repairs to something I understand they could easily have been prevented? The one star in this review is purely attributable to Tim, who I spoke with yesterday (that and Yelp won't let me give them zero). Anyone who values integrity in the businesses they deal with should stay away from this dealership, as I intend to do in the future. ***Update 8/26/2013*** About 1/2 hour after I posted this review and sent a copy to Herb Chambers corporate offices (Thursday 8/8), I got a call from Jim Pope (service manager) who told me he was authorized to give me a further 10% discount, bringing the price down to roughly $1710, which he told me would include all taxes so that would be my final price. They had ordered the engine, and he said he would call me when it came in. I received a call on Tuesday 8/13 to let me know that the engine had arrived and that they would check it over and begin the installation, and he would let me know when it was completed. He also told me that the price had come in lower than previously quoted, and the total was looking to be a little under $1500. When I asked for a ballpark timeline, he said that it was possible that it would be done Friday (8/16), but he would call when it was complete. I just got a call from Jim to let me know that the work has been completed. He also said that they replaced the radiator at no charge, as they discovered it was leaking (ASE-certified master tech ex-husband says it's probably because they broke it during the engine replacement), and Jim also had them balance the tires (I had noticed a shake at highways speeds that hadn't been there prior to my initial service, during which they replaced a tie rod end, so I thought it was an alignment issue but Jim said it was more likely tire balancing). So, all in all, I'm not sure how to sum up this experience. Jim has been more helpful and solicitous these last few weeks -- outwardly very concerned with my satisfaction -- but I still feel like I had to fight too hard to get to a point where I felt I was being treated fairly. *** Update 8/30 *** When reviewing and signing the paperwork when I picked up my car on Monday (8/26), I noticed a comment about "an existing exhaust leak," which came as a surprise to me, since neither I nor my ex-husband (ASE-certified master technician), nor any of the techs who had driven my car during the 6 weeks it was in their shop being repaired had ever mentioned hearing a noise or noticing any leak. And sure enough, when I started up the car, I heard the characteristic buzz of an exhaust leak. Also, as I pulled out of the parking lot, the brakes (which I had brought up as a concern after the first repair but was a lesser priority than the engine issues) did not seem to be fixed. Then, on the ride home, the Check Engine light came on. Frustrated with the situation, I submitted some feedback to Herb Chambers corporate offices via their online form on Monday night, requesting a return call to discuss possible resolutions. To date, I have not had a response. Tuesday morning, I called Jim Pope and told him about the Check Engine light. He seemed largely unconcerned and scheduled an appointment for me to come in on Thursday (they earliest they were able to accommodate me) to have the code scanned to see what triggered it. Thursday (8/29), I brought the car to its schedule appointment. Jim brought me back to the shop, showed me that the code was something about a post-exhaust something-or-other, and pointed out where the "existing" exhaust leak is. The flex pipe that has the leak is covered by a metal mesh (admittedly beginning to fray at one end, but not near where they say the leak is), so I wonder how they knew it existed before it was brought in to the shop. Considering that the tech told me that the pipe can wear from the torque that the engine experiences, and given that virtually all of my driving is on the highway (little stopping and starting to torque the engine) plus the fact that it looks like someone was rushing this job enough to bust the radiator when removing the engine (why else would it have been replaced without me even paying for the part?), it's not a big stretch to think that they had a hand in creating this problem as well. But I was given a card for a local muffler repair shop and told that the cost of fix there would be about $150 or so, cheaper than what I would pay at the dealership. I was hoping to hear from someone at Herb Chambers corporate in response to my online form submission (apparently their definition of a "prompt response" is different from my own), but have yet to hear back. ASE-certified master tech ex-husband says that they're walking all over me, but I have a demanding job, long commute, house and child to juggle and frankly have little time or energy to deal with this string of issues. I am at my wit's end in trying to get this resolved and am unsure where to proceed from here. All in all, I would advise anyone -- or at least anyone who isn't up for a protracted struggle if things go wrong -- to find a different dealership, perhaps even a different chain of dealerships, to bring your car to. (Apologies for the length of the review, but it's been a lengthy series of events that led to this point) More