so as most of you know i used to work at a dealership and we had to attempt to fix cars. i guess this happened around christmas 01. the protege 5's had recently come out and this one comes into the shop making a funny noise. when you'd hit about 25-30mph it would all of a sudden make a noise from the rear like it had a bad bearing, then it would go away about 45 and come back again about 60 but double time. the tech drives the car and orders a rear wheel bearing. doesnt fix it, he puts it on the other side doesnt fix it. so he starts looking at everything. he pulls the interior out, the shocks etc with no result. the mazda rep happens to come by and we say theres nothing much left we wanna pull the gas tank, the rep wants to put a new tranny in it. so we pulled the gas tank, nothing its fine. the service manager and i drive it, that didnt fix it either. so finally we send it to the other dealership in the chain (the one where 5 of 8 bosses came from).

they call us at 9am the next day, "we fixed it, we pulled the roofrack off and the noise is gone". then we get another call "we put the roofrack back on withour fixes and it makes the noise again"

we then get another call about noon "it was the little american flag they put on the roof (this was after 9/11)"



ok so the punchline: we had 20+ hours into fixing because the flag needed to come off AND since its a flag the customer put it on, its not warranty! mazda did pay for the repair though, remember the rep wanted to change the tranny https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...DIR#>/wink.png



mike

woah.



But isn't that how all dealership technicians are trained. THey just start replacing modules and components until the problem is fixed. They will not rebuild trannies, not trouble shoot.



THey just replace mindlessly until **** gets fixed. That is the difference between real mechanics who own their own shop vs techs at dealerships. THeydon't care. It's under warranty. Just start replacing ****.

yah but we had 20 hours into a car that needed a flag removed!

I should put a flag on my car, and blame all my real problems on it.

lol, it works!

as a bonus everytime that tech couldnt figure something out we got to ask if there was a flag on the roof

Dammit...now you've ruined my day...



Reminds me of the time I had to pay $45 because my wife (without asking me to look at it) took our van in (under warrenty) with a strange noise in the drivers door.



I should have stabbed her with the pair of scissors they took out of the little door compartment next to all her coupons...

uh... yeah, one time my buddy was like, "what's that rattling in the glove box" so I opened the box and pulled out my gun and shot him in the nutz.

stab your wife with a pair of scissors, huh?



well at least make you stab her in the eye. no need to waste a good stabbing

i know people who work at bmw you'd be surprised at how often the rattle in the trunk is golf clubs



mike