Took the baby in Monday night to have it looked at for a funny noise as I was traveling down the road. Got a call early Tuesday morning telling me it was a right front wheel bearing. "Great!" I say as it's covered under warranty.
They proceed to tell me that they don't have the part to fix it and will have to order it and will be in on Wednesday, so I asked them to call the local Enterprise so I could get a rental. I end up with a '08 Malibu LT which I don't really mind since I've had a Malibu in the past.
Called the service department at 3:30PM on Wednesday(today) to see if the bearing had been replaced so I could come get my car back. "Please hold" is what I get from the person on the other line and then he comes back on the line and says "Is your vehicle even here?"
I am now freaked out thinking if these people don't know my car is in their shop then I sure don't want them working on it!!! I then get the excuse that the part just arrived and it will be ready to pick up when I get off work. Now I'm not sure how long it will take to fix this thing, but it sounds to me like they are going to do a "rush" job to have it ready for me by 5:30. I am now freaking out again thinking it won't be done correctly and I will have to take it back because they did a hurry up job. Hope everything comes out ok.

 

I wouldn't worry. A hub repacement is a simple repair and doesn't take long to do properly.

 

It's now 20 minutes after the initial call to the dealership and I just got a call from them saying it was done. I asked them what kind of time it takes to change that bearing and he says about an hour. So I asked him why the guy I talked to 20 minutes ago said it wasn't even in the shop yet and it's miraculously done in 20 minutes?
I get the run around that a good technician can probably do it in 30 minutes and the one hour is just "flag time". Either way, it's done and I hope I don't have to take it back to this crap dealership.

 

I can do one in 30 min easy. Thats how techs make money is by beating flat rate. I would be very suprised if a tech could manage to screw up a simple job like a hub replacement. Any way I'm glad they got it done for ya.

 

I was a service orderwriter for army in Iraq. We have same system manual tells you how it will/should take. Most of time, mechanics would get it done quick. I am guessing when you called you got a person who didn't know or looked at your file and wasn't updated saying it was in shop/done.

 

True, but the rush to beat flat rate can come back and bite the customer if the repair is complex and at or beyond the limit of the tech's abilities, AND the service mgr doesn't have a more skilled tech available to get it done on time. This formula is usually behind the scenes when we hear dealership service dept horror stories.

 

As a tech you have to be smart about it because while beating flat rate makes you money. Having a come back looses you more money than not beating the flat rate the first time you did the job. So for me I would rather get the job done quick and done properly the first time so that I don't end up loosing money. So it really doesn't pay for a tech to rush through a job for a first time repair. But if you have changed 50 or so hubs you can probably get it done pretty quick.