Hey guys, Im not going to get into details. But Jack does not work at Browning any more. I saw the post and the people I talked to on Saturday, so I just want you guys to know Jack does not work for us any longer. So now when you come in just talk to Willie, He used to be a tech now he is a service advisor, He has owned a rx7 in the past, he is very knowledgeable with the rotary.

 

Good service with willie? it saddened me today to see a very bad service manager at santamonica mazda... but i talked to the secretary there.. after talking to my internet manager friend there reza... who will get you the best freaking deal on a car...

anyway.. the secretary said.. shes gotten complaints about this service manager and that he will be fired soon.. and going to talk to the gm about it... the guys name she said was neil...


i'm going in tomorrow.. maybe get a loaner.. and better service from other manager..

 

Super. I took my car in and Willie was very cool.. he seemed to know his Rotary, and talked a bit about Sevenstock. I wasn't too fond of Jack either.. he didn't seem to care about the customers, and took the job almost arrogantly, as if he was doing US a favor, instead of looking it at as a service job where the customer is helping them have their jobs. Without Customers, how can there be any service department right?

 

Well, after seeing this thread from ibfubar2000, I decided to crawl out from the woods and tell my experience with Jack. I always hate to see someone loosing his/her job, but again if that person was not performing to the standards I see it well justified. To me, my experience with Jack was somewhat neutral until recently. After reading the complains about “trying to find reasons to void the warranty” even is not related to the affected area, I decided to be prepared.

1) I set my appointment a week before on a “non busy day” to do my recalls and to replace my cracked rear defrost button. First thing came up from him was “We may want to leave your car overnight because we don’t stock these parts” I said ok, no problem. So he wrote on his business card the date and time that I will be dropping off my car (Wednesday at 7:00 am)

2) On the following Wednesday morning I showed up and Jack was just opening. He asked me if I need service and I told him yes and I have an appointment. He looked at the computer but could not find my name. I showed him the business card he wrote and he said “ok, let me grab my papers”. Now that was lame! You get an appointment and not even bothered to put you name in the system. So technically I did not have an appointment!

3) He proceeded to check my car for dings and scratches which is good IMO so that there is documentation to prevent any dispute. Then, he turned on my headlights and check for functionality why? don’t know. Open my hood and check if I had “the mods” but my car is bone stock.
Then he proceeded to crank my wheel on one side to look for tire wear. I know that I have about 1/16 left on my original Potenzas tires before the wear bars. But after seeing my odometer close to 30K, I mentioned that I rotated my tires every 10K miles. He said that it should be every time I change my oil. “whatever”
I asked also about the cracked defrost button he was like what you are talking about kind of look. I showed to him and he said “I am going to ask a tech to check it out”. Dough! don’t you see the crack!.

4) We went back to the office and he did some typing. I asked to have a loaner vehicle because I need to go to work. And of course I was already prepared mentally to leave my car overnight while waiting for the replacement part…to be more specific the entire HVAC control unit because I had no faulty *****. Those get replaced without removing the entire unit per the TSB. I got a crappy Chevy Aveo for loaner. Oh well, I needed a way of getting to work.

5) I got a call around 2:00 pm saying that my car was ready. I couldn’t believe it and I was prepared to give my piece of mind if I have to come back to replace my defrost button because it was the whole purpose to have a loaner. I got there, and all the work was done including the defrost button, I guessed that they had the replacement part on stock.

6) Overall it was ok. But here are my mixed feelings with Browning service department. Yesterday I got a voice mail from them, and told me that I have to bring back my car because of the recall work done and needed to install the heat shield pad on my fuel tank. Confused and thinking that I got that recall done (after almost a month), I took out my paperwork and took a close look.

The paperwork shows that they performed the suspension arm recall inspection. I knew that I do not have the questionable suspension arms since I already inspected my self (thanks to this site). Got my PCM flashed with the latest software and here is the deal… HEAT SHIELD PAD NOT NEEDED … WTF! I was really mad because it clearly that my VIN falls into group 1. So this morning I went back with a cooled down head proceeded to talk to Willie and explain the situation. And off course the lady service rep who called me confirmed my request. Willie was cool and willing to help. So he proceeded to do the vehicle walk around and inspection (I guess is now a requirement from them). Since at that time was skeptical, I asked again to verify that I have the latest flash. I asked why heat shield pad was left out. His reply was “well the initial recall was for the vehicles on stock and because the word got out everyone wanted to do it. Basically it was implied that they didn’t have the shield on stock.
His answer did not make any sense since I waited a few weeks after I got the official letter from Mazda. At the same time why they (in this case Jack) wrote on the paperwork that the “heat shield pad not needed”? If they didn’t have any on stock they should have stated something like “heat shield out of stock, recall service needs to be rescheduled” Do I make any sense?
After all said and done I was out a little bit over an hour.
Here are my speculations of what happened. Either someone at Mazda or at Browning realized that my recall was not properly done while filing the warranty/recall work. I am really leaning towards when Mazda was processing the warranty claim. A red flag was raised because it does not show the insulator pad was installed and again it clearly stated that my car does not need the insulator pad. And of course in an event of fuel tank failure, guess what? Mazda and the dealership will be responsible. I would assume that it went all the down from the top and ultimately was the service writer responsibility to make sure that the work was done properly. So, I assumed that was one of the reasons why my original service writer (Jack) is gone.

Anyway, would I go back to Browning for future service? I would say yes, but this time I will look carefully on the paperwork to avoid similar situations. I hope that this was just an isolated incident. And thanks for reading my long post.

 

cool..guess i whould take my car in then...i need to get my tsb's done

 

Good to know, my next service will be back to Browning again :D I was avoiding having to see Jack by doing my last service & recall work at another dealer

 

Can't say anyone would really say "HEY JACK, YOU DID A SUPER JOB."... Out of the 3 times I was there, I cringed when he had to help me with my car... The recall service was weary when he did the "open your hood mod check"... then the 30k service was slow as heck, even though he said he couldn't give me a loaner to get myself to work...

I wonder if any of the guys over there ever reads this forum and sees these things... I think it beats those annoying phone call surveys of "Was the service good or not?" This is our complete thoughts written concisely and in details.

 

Reza jacked me. I wouldn't go back to Santa Monica if you paid me. Things that they promised in 3 days, took 3 weeks. Promised to refund me $400 for the issues, finally gave me $200 after 3 months of phone calls. GM was pretty unresponsive. Overall, awful experience with them.

 

The people at Santa Monica Mazda sucks! I have had such a bad time with them.