Gumbo

My Volvo needed it's 22,500 mile maintenance. I called up last Wednesday for an appointment and a loaner car for the day. So I made the appointment for this morning, and I brought it in for the service and a new problem that developed when the car would either stall out or leap forward every now and then that started yesterday afternoon.

I get to the dealership, and they have no record of my appointment. They were still able to get me in for the service and the repair, so no big deal. Then time to go in for a loaner car, which luckily they had.

They get going on the process when the lady discovers that the car isn't registered to me, but to my father. She says delership policy is only to give loaner vehicles to the person on the registration. She then looks at my license, and realizes that I am 21, and their policy is at least 23 years of age to get a loaner car. These policies are fine, and don't really bother me that much, except for the fact that they could have brought these things up before I brought the car there. Now I know that they didn't have my name in the computer because of a mixup, but they did tell me on the phone last Wednesday that all I needed was proof of $100k/$300k coverage on my insurance, and I don't believe the loaner car policy that affects me has changed since that conversation.

So I'm off to Enterprise, which they paid for, but since they didn't have my appointment ready, or realize ahead of time that they wouldn't give me a loaner car, they didn't have a vehicle for me at Enterprise. So I wait for a half an hour as they get me a vehicle. Now at this point I was ready to get out of there, so I would have taken anything except for one of those Geo Metro cars that they rent(looks like a little deathtrap to me). They found me a Ford F-150, and I was happy to take it, but now it's about 1 hour after I dropped the car off at the dealership.

So, a half an hour goes by, and I get a call from the Volvo service tech. He starts to tell me that I never went in for my 15,000 mile service, and how there is damage because of it, blah, blah, blah. Since I usually leave the Volvo in Fort Lauderdale, I don't drive it much, so I had no idea whether this is true or not. I wasn't driving it at about 15,000 miles. So now I'm pissed that somebody in my family that has been driving it hasn't gone for service, and what that may mean for warranty, and for the lease.

I call my father up to tell him about this, and he insists that he remembers it being taken in for that service. So when I call back the dealership, the guy changes his story, and says he thinks it's been in for a service, but the other dealer must have forgotten to put in a new cabin air filter(which they're charging me for). And I need new brake pads that are costing me $180 on top of service.

The good news is that they found the problem with the idle and surging, and think it's the throttle body is dirty or filled with gunk. I have no idea about this type of thing, so I'm not even going to try. At least that is covered by warranty.

So in the end, my day hasn't been that incredibly bad after all now that I'm done ranting, just inconvenient. I would have liked better communication from my dealership, and a vehicle waiting for me, but what am I to do?