Complaint Review: Earnhardt - Gilbert Arizona

This is a complaint about Earnhardt Dodge located in Gilbert, AZ.

In Oct. of 2000 my husband and I decided that it was time to get another vehicle. We shopped around for about a month or so, and we decided to go with Earnhardt Dodge because it was close to home and the prices were comparable to every other dealership that we went to.

When I saw a black 2001 Dodge Dakota club cab from across the lot, I knew that I had to have it.

I had always wanted a truck, and I thought the Dakota's were sharp looking. After a test drive and the salesman's influence, we decided to get it. When we drove it off the lot to take it home I noticed that there were only 12 miles on it. Pretty good for a NEW vehicle.

A few weeks into ownership, I started to hear a noise coming from under the hood. I decided to take it to the Earnhardt service Dept. and have it checked out. They told me that they hooked the truck up to their computer and did not see anything wrong. I had never gone through this before so I accepted their answer and left it at that. Shortly thereafter I started hearing the noises again.

I once again took it to the service Dept. and they could not see anything wrong. Finally a really nice man by the name of Luis decided to hook up some portable computer to the truck that would take a picture of engine the next time that "it" happened. Sure enough about 2 days later I was back in the Service Dept. having my truck looked at. They came to the conclusion that the cerpentine belt had shredded. They replaced the belt and I was a happy camper....so I thought.

A few weeks later I was making a left hand turn in a busy intersection, and my truck completely shut down. It lost all power. Luckily I was able to "coast" out of the intersection and it regained the power after about 2 minutes.

I again made a trip to the service dept. and they basically told me that it was MY fault because I was grinding the shifter into the gears. I could not believe it! Not only have I only driven stick shift since I got my license(10 years)I know enough about vehicles to know that the problem had nothing to do with the clutch.

Well I had this problem off and on for the first 3 months of owning the truck, and they finally figured out that the problem was the pully's and the belt. I had the belt replaced 6 times within 3 months due to it being shredded!

I finally got upset to the point that I knew this was an unsafe vehicle, so I took it to upper management.

This Jerk, we will call him Tim, was a real butthead and he did not want to help us. It got to the point that I was crying over all the problems I was having with my dream truck, that he finally decided to make things right by extending our warranty. Sounds fair right?

Thats what I thought.... until we found out that the belts were not even covered under warranty. What kind of garbage is that? He was obiviously trying to pull a fast one on us and we beat him at his own game. I immediatly called him and told him I needed to speak to someone at the Chrysler office. I figured if anyone could help it would be them.

The Earnhardt Service manager, we will call him Tim, told me that he could not give us Chryslers direct number, but he had a meeting with a Chrysler rep that week and he would have someone call us. Needless to say we gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited 3 weeks for a call. Ultimatly we ended up going round and round with this Tim manager guy for 27 months and had a bazillion repairs within that time. We always had to pay for our rental cars, which you would think they would cover it under those circumstances, but no.

Finally 27 months later I had enough and I got in contact with the Chrysler Corp. They did in fact agree to buy the truck back because it was deemed "unsafe" by their head honchos, but there were a bunch of stupid terms. Not only had I already paid them almost $10,000 since I bought the truck, they wanted me to also pay for the milage usage which was around $4,000. Not only that, but I had to agree to buy another vehicle from Earnhardt Dodge.

I felt trapped. After all the problems I had with the truck, there was no way I wanted another crappy vehicle from them. The girl from Chrysler basically said that if I didn't agree to their terms I was going to have to keep my "unsafe" vehicle and they would do nothing. I tried to explain to her that there wouldn't have been as much milage on the truck if they would have resolved this sooner, like within the first 3 months when 6 belts were replaced. She didn't really care.

Finally I was so pissed and frusterated that I decided to go along with their crap and just get into a safer vehicle. My other options had already run out as far as filing the lemon law ( we tried to get a lawyer in the beginning of the issues but no one wanted to take the case)so I ended up with another Dodge, this time a car. I got a 2003 Dodge Stratus RT and so far so good. But I'm not happy about buying it from Earnhardts. (We have had a few SMALL issues with the new car, but it has only been with their crappy stock alarms.)

Also... Chrysler had told me that the truck would be shipped to their main office and eventually be disposed of (due to the "unsafeness") but I just recently found out that they actually sold it at an auction. Now someone else is going to have to deal with all that crap.I'm telling you, this truck was a LEMON, I just hope no one gets hurt.

All in all, I have to say, aside from the car that were basically forced into buying from Earnhardt(we had no other option other than to get hurt in an accident due to the truck)I will NEVER EVER buy another vehicle from them. I realize that the truck was bad from the factory, but if they had any decency they would have helped us instead of giving us the run around.Its that simple.

Jennifer

Gilbert, Arizona
U.S.A.

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