It's really sad but it seems like whenever I visit a dealership for my own purposes I experience some element of poor service. The latest is my visit to a Mitsubishi dealership for service on my 2003 Montero Limited. It took 6 days to diagnose and repair a short to ground problem, but the delay itself wasn't really the issue. The reason for the delay, and the lack of regular communication was the issue.

I do understand that electrical problems can be difficult to diagnose. And the way the technician went about the repair continued to blow the main 20 amp engine fuseable link. According to the tech line at the manufacturer, this wasn't unusual. What was uncalled for was the fact that they only had a few fuses in stock and they had to hold off the diagnosis until they got more.

To make matters more frustrating, the service advisor (a very nice person) let me know the situation at 6:30 in the evening, after I had called to check status at 2:30. This was two days after the vehicle had been towed in. And of course, I'm the one making all the calls to the dealership; they are not calling me to keep me informed unless I've requested an update.

So I call again the next morning at 11:30 and ask the advisor for status. He tells me that the nearest dealer that had any fuses was so far away that it was still an hour from arrival. And when I had to run to the dealership for the rental car (an extra hour of my time), one of the technicians told me that the fuse we needed was only available from the manufacturer. He didn't know that when the vehicle had originally failed, I found the blown fuse and picked up another one at the local Auto Zone. But as is usually the case, the typical dealership doesn't train their people to think about things like that.

Now I understand that the manufacturer won't warrant a repair with aftermarket parts. But the issue with the fuse was that they couldn't complete the diagnosis to find the wiring problem without it. They could have used an aftermarket fuse for that and saved at least a day or more on the repair.

Finally, upon finding the source of the problem (wiring butting against the exhaust manifold which blew an O2 sensor), they removed the O2 sensor only to strip out the catalytic converter because the sensor was heat seized. Still not a problem to me, but guess what: No catalytic converter in stock and another day of driving a less than spectacular rental car.

Service Advisors please hear me: I've done your job. I know the struggles you face. I know the pace and the stress. I've also managed a service department, so I understand about nagging customers. But there is no excuse for status quo approaches to customer service in today's competitive environment. It's time to get out of your rut and start thinking about what is best for the customer before you lose all of them to Wal-mart or Sears.

On a side note: I'll let the dealership know in the verbatim section of the CSI Survey about my concerns. But I won't give them a bad score, because I think Survey's are mostly unfair to the dealers and the manufacturers. I also want Mitsubishi to survive, so I'll do my part to help support the cause.

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