Complaint Review: Transplant Transmissions Downingtown - Downingtown Pennsylvania

The ripoff report does not include a customer name or identify a vehicle so this response can only be in general terms.  The first complaint was that the customer felt that we did not offer a good explanation as to what was wrong with the vehicle's transmission.  We have quite detailed invoices that list every part of a transmission replaced.  We give detailed lists of internal parts that failed.  That being said, there are times when we honestly don't know exactly what caused the failure since there can be many scenarios. It can be a "What came first the chicken or the egg?" type of event.  We can always offer several possibilities for failure and if the customer who filed the report would contact us we will be happy to go over his vehicle history with him. 

The second complaint is that we wouldn't repair his transmission under warranty simply because they had failed to comply with two requirements that are detailed on the warranty papers.  The first requirement is that the vehicle come back for a re-check within a few weeks or 200 miles.  We do this because we need to make sure that everything is still working properly and no adjustments are needed.  The second requirement is that we see the vehicle again every 12 months or 12,000 miles to change the filter, pan gasket, transmission fluid, road test the vehicle, scan the vehicle for engine/transmission codes and make any necessary adjustments.  Both of these requirements are detailed in large print on the warranty papers, repeated again in the written delivery instructions and verbally reinforced when a customer picks up his vehicle.

There is a very important reason we require the services as a part of the warranty.  We recently honed the valves in a valve body during the required transmission service on a vehicle that had a three year warranty.  The time to remove the valve body, hone out the valves, install replacement valves and replace the repaired valve body back into the vehicle was perhaps 3-4 hours.  We also had about $100 in replacement valve cost.  Had we performed this same work on a vehicle that wasn't being serviced for their warranty we would have charged approximately $400 -$500 plus fluid.  The cost to our customer was only $139 - what our standard expanded service always costs. .. which brings me to the point that we provide far more than a simple fluid change in our transmission services for our customers.  We require these services when we put longer warranties on vehicles for just that reason.  In this instance, the valve body was beginning to show signs of wear.  We were able to prevent a transmission failure that would have been caused by worn valves by taking care of it at the service point.  As I mentioned, there was no additional charge for this work but it did keep the transmission working properly.

This customer stated that we did do an out of warranty repair for $1200.  It is our policy at Transplant (unlike any other transmission remanufacturing company that I know of) to take care of vehicles that we have worked on previously even if there is no longer any warranty at our cost.  This seems right in line with the cost for such a repair.  When we work on a vehicle of this nature we only cover our cost for parts and our employees actual labor time.  There is no 'profit' in the bill, our costs are simply covered.  Our customers have always felt that this is a very fair way to handle additional repairs.

Customer satisfaction is our primary goal at Transplant.  I feel very badly that a customer thinks we were unfair.  I hope that the customer who filed this rip-off report will contact us and we can make sure he/she understands the reason behind everything we do.  We will go over their service records and if we have made an error we will definitely correct it.  I know it is unrealistic to think that we can make everybody happy but we certainly do try to do so.