After my husband picked up my car from the dealer service, my son found a car booster seat in the back seat. We wondered if it belonged to my sister at the other end of the state, since we had just visited. The Check Engine light went on during the drive home, and the car spent a week being diagnosed and repaired.

Well, we visited my sister this weekend, and it isn't her car seat!!! That means that someone at the dealership had driven my car with their child in it. I am incensed!

The Service Manager and the person that sold me the car have both recently left the dealership. I don't know if they left or were laid off, or why.

I suppose I could just let this go and take my business elsewhere, but I am just too angry. They were supposed to just FIX the car, not use it to drive their kids around town!!!

 

I'd go back to the dealership and figure out who worked on your car. Them using your car for personal transportation is completely out of line. They should be fired.

I'd keep the booster too.....them not having it will teach them a lesson.

 

It does'nt mean the tech drove it. The service writer/service manager/gm could have driven it also. If it was an intermittent problem or hard to diagnose problem then it would need to be put through normal driving. I have had customers beg me to drive their cars for a week to figure out what the problem was.

 

On my 2002 Explorer both the Service manager and the Tech Drove it home for a week before 1 of them had the problem happen to them, sometimes with intermittent problems it is the only way to find a problem. Although bringing your child along to me might be a little much, if they drove it to their house after leaving work and had to do the normal things, IE pick up the kid from Daycare and then drop them off in the Morning on their way to work would explain the Booster seat.

 

If someone was taking my car overnight, I would want to be notified of that.

 

The issue with the car was that the Check Engine light came on. There were several codes, so diagnosis was rather complicated. It eventually turned out to be the thermostat, which literally fell apart when they replaced it. Would clearing the codes and driving it some more help the diagnosis process? If so, then I'm okay with them driving it AND picking & dropping off kids along the way. I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with car seats anymore!

BTW, I'm seriously considering selling my car.

 

You do have to do some driving after you reset the codes to make sure they don't come back on, and I can definitely see them driving it to diagnose the issue if there were multiple codes.

 

even if necessary,, owner of car should be notified/informed ahead though... instead of just finding traces of evidence behind... in this case the car booster seat.

 

Me... I would return the car seat to the manager and ask how it came to be in my car.

 

+1.^^