After having middle of the road dealings with a couple of dealerships, I've developed a case of oft-cynical-consumeritis, but today I was impressed with a dealer here in Houston. I took my 8 to Jeff Haas for my regularly scheduled service / rattle elimination crusade last friday and picked it up after work - they had spent all day working on it, and only found one of 4-5 rattles. At any rate, they were pretty good about the service, and I went to Austin with my fiancee later that evening.

On Saturday morning we were standing around outside at a restraunt waiting for a table, when I noticed that the front wheels were all covered in some kind of tar. I went over there, checked it out, and found that there was a 3” long scratch down one of the spokes and the rim had been run into something, lightly gouging it. I went to the other side and checked out the other wheels, and found that the other front wheel had been ground against something in roughly an 70 degree arc all along the edge. I was more than a little upset, so I called the dealership (open on Saturdays) and talked to one of their service dept guys who made a note of it and told me to bring it in today. So today on my lunch hour, I went down to Haas, and showed the service guys & the manager the wheels. They made some notes, said they were sorry and scheduled me for tomorrow to bring the car in to have the wheels refurbished. They never once insinuated it was my fault (and it most certainly wasn’t – that would take some work to do what they did), and they got me in and out without any hemming and hawwing.

I’ll be more impressed once the whole issue is resolved, but so far, these guys have been really good when it comes to addressing my concerns with the car (I think it must have been built on a Friday afternoon), etc. As cynical as I’ve become with dealerships, I was expecting a fight to get any action out of them at all – but here I am caught in the middle of a good dealership experience. I could get used to this…
:)

Nice to know Boozehound, thanks

I bought mine at Mazda in Kingwood. Typical dealership mentality. Thankfully I knew what I was looking for, thanks to this forum. I havent had a reason to use any Mazda service center yet but I'm glad to know were to take it if I do. I work downtown so that puts me in the middle of everything. GOod luck with your wheels, I know how you feel. I was putting my RX up on some home made ramps and nicked the spoiler, made me sick. Its bad enough when someone else does it but when I did it, yuk!

Well I just posted a reply and have no idea where it went. I bought mine at Jeff Haas and it's good to know about their service. Good and bad actually. Good to know that they'll fix it and bad to figure that they were negligent enough to screw it up in the first place....

I'm not Johnny-Ringing-Endorsement just yet, but Haas has been fairly helpful in getting some issues resolved. Today I dropped off the 8, got a loaner 6, and asked them to take a look at some more rattles and the throwout bearing. The techs are a little rough with things like some of the interior pieces and obviously the wheels (my sneaking suspicion is that the wash tunnel or the lifts were run into), but they seem pretty good about working on things and trying to make things right with me (not just the wheels), so until something happens, I think they'll keep getting to see my red 8 for a while.