Complaint Review: Firestone

I must say, when all the furore about Firestone tires came about, we stood by them. For tires, they are excellent. We have Firestone tires on both our truck and our car. No problems. Service was great (albeit a bit slow) and we thought we had a good relationship with them. This is about Firestone service and about customer satisfaction. My husband and I have been loyal Firestone customers for over a year, but recent events have given us cause to doubt whether our trust was misplaced.

We own a Pontiac Bonneville. Good running car, very efficient on fuel. Then our air conditioner went out. We heard it clicking, and then the relay switch went out on June 14th.

We took the car to Firestone (1104 Woodruff Road, Greenville, SC 29607) on June 16th 2001 to have them fix the air conditioner - to replace the relay switch - and give the system a service. The technician was Jim Worley. They did ... although it wasn't as cold as it had been before and kept going warm. About three weeks later, it had stopped working completely. My husband took it back on 9th July, the technician was Chad Crowe, they ran it through the system, said there was nothing wrong with it and sent him on his way. It worked, on and off, for about another two weeks. In that time, it was often cooler to run just the fan rather than the a/c. With my husband working (at one point sent by his company to Jacksonville, FL for a few days) and me, we didn't have time to get the vehicle back to Firestone for a couple of weeks.

My husband explained the situation to the guy behind the desk (Bill) who immediately copped an attitude. Now, unless you have something to hide or cover up, why would you be verbally obnoxious to a customer who starts explaining that this is the 3rd time in about 7 weeks that the a/c has quit, and that the relay switch had been changed the one time, but that the a/c is now not working again? Why would a customer service rep become so agitated and defensive UNLESS they know they have something to cover up?

We took it to another place for a diagnostic check on a computer, on 25th August. An independent company, Precision Tune Auto Care, also on Woodruff Road, since our local Firestone does not have a diagnostic machine. They said there was nothing wrong with our a/c but that someone had contaminated it with old style Freon. It was heating up and gelling and that was when our a/c was packing up now. Their machine showed that our R134 system was contaminated with R12, in a ratio of 49.8% R134 to 50.2 % R12.

Well, that kind of explained the reaction the week before, we thought. We decided to go talk to Firestone and tell them what we'd found out. We left the one place and immediately went down to try to talk to them. The guy who had been rude the week before wasn't there but we then informed that he was in fact the manager. The guy that was there this time basically said that it had to have been messed up by someone else, not them. He walked away from us towards the bathroom so as to end the conversation.

Since they did not have anyone a/c qualified there, we figured we would take it to the other Firestone (49 E Antrim Drive, Grenville) in our area, to give them the benefit of the doubt, and see if they could fix it. They said they could do it but to bring it in the following weekend.

Well my husband took it down ... and came out with a quote for over $1300 because apparently they are now saying the compressor is leaking and there is yellow dye leaking around it. Now, since we hadn't been trying to use the a/c since the week before, I can't help but wonder why it has suddenly leaked - and why the other place found nothing wrong other than the Freon.

The manual that comes with our car states that mixing the different Freons can cause the compressor to fail.

As to the Freon, the original Firestone, the previous week, had said it must have been contaminated before they touched it. Well, if it's flushed out and recharged and seizes up 2 weeks later, and is then redone and seizes up again 2 weeks later - why had it run fine since we'd got the car, and not seized up in that time? Commonsense tells me it should have been seizing up at approximately bi-weekly intervals. In that previous period we had done a couple of 1000 mile treks, with no probs and having the a/c working perfectly.

Also, IF as they claimed, they had sucked out all the contents and then put fresh in ... how would the system be contaminated on a 52% to 48% basis? To be almost half of the wrong type of Freon doesn't sound to me like it was all sucked out and then new put in.

I think the government needs to pass like a lemon law on car repairs. We paid good money and have nothing for it. The guy who had been obnoxious to my husband that time had said they'd refund our account. Well, it's not been done yet and this is over a month now ...what does that tell me? Guess what - I think it was more lies and they have no intention of doing it. More to the point, we STILL do not have any a/c, and now it will cost us more than $1300 to put it right.

Update:

The main company called me back with the local manager (who was Bill!) on the line. He told me basically the opposite of what we had been told up until then, that they sucked out and put the SAME stuff back in, NOT NEW, and that there was no way it had got contaminated as they use different fittings on the machines for the different types of freon. He said he would talk to his workers and get back to me the next day. He did call me back the next day but basically told me the same as he had the day before - that there was no way it was Firestone's fault. He again said he would talk to the mechanics and call me back the next day, but I never heard from him again and this was maybe 3 or 4 months ago now.

I've got the message loud and clear.
"You got screwed. You can't win. We told you one thing all those times you were disputing this and now we're telling you the opposite. "

Well, in a way they lose too, because we won't ever spend money with Firestone again and THIS is the account I tell people now about Firestone service.

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