Customer Evaluation of Baltimore Frieghtliner's Service Department for Sprinters
I am an owner of a 2002 140 Hi Passenger Sprinter. While purchased from Charlotte Freightliner, Baltimore Freightliner was the closest dealer that provided service. Further, as a 2002 Sprinter, Dodge dealers do not have the computer plug and software to read my year’s Sprinter electronics. So I am limited to Freightliner dealers that service Sprinters for electronic diagnosis issues. I have had over a dozen trips (at 270 total miles per trip including Sprinter and chase car miles) to Baltimore Freightliner, and my experiences have not been good.
I called Freightliner’s Help Line with regard to my problems with Baltimore Freightliner. They told me flat out that they would not even listen to my problems, much less take a complaint. Why? According to the Freightliner Help Line, Baltimore Freightliner is an independent dealer, and lives or dies by its reputation.
Reputations can only be established by customers passing on their experiences. These are my experiences with Baltimore Freightliner’s service:
Front Desk Staffing: I have become first-name familiar with the front desk staff:
1) Usually courteous and pleasant. Only occasional accusations of trespassing and violation of worker’s personal space notwithstanding obtaining prior approval of such actions.
2) Promised call backs about 25% or less of the time.
3) Front desk staff (plural) will usually blame the customer for not giving them enough time to either find the paperwork, key, or vehicle, or to work on the vehicle, even when the customer delivers the vehicle as pre-arranged and subsequent waits (plural) of over one week.
Customer Status Ranking: Commercial customers first, individual owner customer last. For example, if reservations or promises made for call-backs or other items made to individual owner customers, these promises and reservations will be either bumped or forgotten in favor of commercial customers without informing the individual customer of the new priority or dates.Ticket Paper Work Processes:
1) Drop-off paper work creation: pretty good and efficient on initial ticket creation.
2) Pick-up paper work creation: In 4 different tickets, I never received a copy of the pick-up paperwork except when I asked. Baltimore Freightliner also claims to send a copy to the billing address. I never received any such mailed copy for any of my tickets.
3) Intermediate paper work creation: 3 out of 4 of my tickets required multiple trips to Baltimore Freightliner to complete the service. Baltimore Freightliner neither records the departure or the re-entry of the vehicle into their "care" for these multiple service ticket items. Therefore it is not possible to use their records to point out how often or how long a vehicle has been in service under a given ticket using Baltimore Freightliner records. It appears that this lack of paper work for multiple trip tickets is purposeful, as it creates a situation of "he said, she said" plausible deniability to the benefit of Baltimore Freightliner ("our records only show one in date and one out date" – all subsequent trips are not recorded, and a new ticket is not written on incomplete and subsequent work).
4) Internal paper work management Usually they know where the paper work is. However, it occasionally gets lost, sometimes with the key, and takes a day or two to find from the point they become aware of its loss. If you don’t hear anything for a week, requires telephone calls to ensure that paper work is found, as lost paper work equates to a lost vehicle. Lost paper work implies Baltimore Freightliner has not computerized its work tickets, so there is no ability for them to set up a quality control check for such issues. (Apparently Baltimore Freightliner also does not take inventory of what is parked in their service lot, even on a weekly basis, and compare it to what they have in their records as to what is suppose to be their on their lot.)
Part Ordering: Part ordering is done by computer. However, many times parts that Baltimore Freightliner staff claim remembering as ordered disappear from the computer database, requiring reordering. This can happen multiple times per part at Baltimore Freightliner.Part Tracking:
1) Customer notification of part arrival: about 50%/50% as to whether Baltimore Freightliner will call to inform the customer that the part arrived.
2) Ordered part monitoring: no apparent system to keep Baltimore Freightliner staff informed of outstanding orders unfulfilled.
3) Delivered part tracking: 50%/50% chance that the delivered part will be either lost or used by another customer before you arrive for its installation. After numerous trips where subsequent calls by me resulted in finding out that nothing had been done because they lost the part(s), I started requesting the Front Desk Staff to physically track down the part before agreeing to bring the vehicle in.
Reservations for Work: The front desk will offer service reservations of 8am or noon. However, the ticket paper work/computer has no such data field (apparently the comment field is not used for such items either), and management and mechanics state that there is no such policy. Mechanics will not honor front desk promises – so there appears to be a complete disconnect between the various parts of the service staff from top to bottom.
Workmanship:
1) One well-informed and skilled Sprinter mechanic, clearly overworked.
2) One ill-informed, inattentive and supremely self-confident Sprinter mechanic
3) No systematic quality control
a) Mechanics do not check to see if the replacement part is defective. I gave up on the lumbar pumps; and one of the auxiliary diesel heaters was clearly defective if they had checked (picture posted in the Yahoo picture section).
b) Mechanics do not check to see if their own work was complete and correct. Numerous returns to fix poor workmanship and collateral damage to other components. On one occasion I had to reinstall a seat-belt as it literally fell off after Baltimore Freightliner worked on it (I carry Boy Scouts).
Baltimore Freightliner Management Responsiveness to Complaints: At the suggestion of the sympathetic Baltimore Freightliner telephone board operator, I twice emailed the Vice-President of Baltimore Freightliner (also the owner’s son). Absolutely zero response, or even acknowledgement.
Of my Sprinter van’s 36 month warrantee life, it has sat parked on Baltimore Freightliner’s service lot for at least 10% (3 ½ months) of that time. To give an idea of the defective items the van has been in for, I have never had an EGR, engine, drive-train, major component electrical or AC problem.
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