Hi All,
We recently purchased a certified 05 Boxster for my wife, and I'm a bit dismayed by a couple things that have come up. We've only had the car for about 2k miles and 3 months (2-3 weeks of which is was in the shop after being rear ended), and already we need new tires and brakes. We're only at 30K miles, and the 20k service was performed (late?) before we bought the car with 28k miles.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that these are wear items and aren't covered by any warranty or the like. In addition, the cupholder trim was loose and needs to be replaced (which we pointed out at purchase), and one of the seatback release levers (on the armrest side of the seat) was missing. I can't seem to find an actual list of the "100+" point inspection, but I just feel that these things should have been noticed and replaced during the certification process and that dealer skimped on them.
We've called the dealer and the Service Manager was a bit shocked that we're getting a brake pad wear message at only 30k and won't comment further until we bring it in Thurs. We have a call in to the GM as well with our concern about these issues. Is there anything else we should do? Should we get PCNA involved?
Thanks,
Corey
(The only bright point in this ordeal is I'm hopefully getting a croc for a loaner
)
Needing tires and brakes at 30K is really no surprise at all. In fact, that's incredibly good service life for performance tires, which brings me to my next point.
What gives with the 'Pre-Certified' status? I am no expert on pre-certified, but if there is a 100 point inspection on a used car I would expect tires and brakes to be in the top 10 of those 100 inspections. And I can't imagine that these items were worn from acceptable to unacceptable in the 1 week you drove the car.
I would raise some very stern but polite questions to your dealership about this. Make it clear that you are very disappointed with the 'pre-certified' inspection. Tell them that you expected the pre-certified status to protect you from buying a car that needed immediate service and that would like to know why they would mislead you by selling you the car and not disclosing that the tires and brakes were beyond their usefull life at delivery. Ask them for the phone number to Porsche so you can call them to share your complaint.
Once you ask for the phone number, I suspect that their whole attitude will change. PCNA is brutally hard on their dealerships. They don't want this kind of stuff to happen and they expect the dealers to be responsible for preventing it. I suspect that they will not want you to call Porsche and that they are very likely to work out a resolution with you.
I think we're pretty much in agreement. I'm not suggesting that wear items shouldn't need to be replaced at 30k miles but that these things certainly should have been caught during the certification process, and like you said, shouldn't have gone from acceptable by PCNA's standards to needing replacement in such a short period of time.
We're taking an approach much like you've listed, so I'll see what they have to say tomorrow.
