Jo Latimore

Review of Champion Jeep

As it stands, we will never visit any Champion gro...

As it stands, we will never visit any Champion group dealership for sales or service in the future, and now have no interest in purchasing additional Chrysler vehicles.

We returned to Champion on Thursday morning, March 7, and met with the Service Manager. We provided a copy of our service receipt clearly stating the use of CVTF+4 fluid, the correct fluid for our vehicle. He did not believe the receipt. He showed us vials of new CVTF+4 fluid (green) and fluid removed from our vehicle (red), and said that since all CVT fluid is green, our mechanic had ruined our transmission. We had researched CVT fluid earlier, and discovered that it comes in several colors (green, red, blue) depending on the manufacturer. When we explained this to Jeff, he became very defensive, insisting that we were wrong, and variously accusing us and our mechanic of lying. He claimed he had called like 10 fluid places and they all said it only came in green. He refused to listen to us. He actually cut us off mid-sentence several times and finally said, I wanted to work with you, but if you re going to accuse me of lying, I m just not going to work with you. I was shocked by this. We are customers of Champion Auto Group, faced with a $27,000 vehicle under warranty that has undergone major mechanical failure and the Service Manager (who represents Champion group as well as Chrysler itself) is refusing to work with us ?

In summary, my Patriot sat at Champion for 13 days. No apology was offered for the mechanical failure of the vehicle, for the misdiagnosis of a fluid type error (which would have cost me thousands of dollars had I not questioned it), for suggesting that the brand name of fluid would void our warranty, or that the actual time from warranty approval to finishing the job was much longer than we had been told. This is not to mention the rude, uncooperative, and disrespectful treatment we received.

How does an individual with no customer service skill, or knowledge of basic automotive fluids, obtain the title of dealership Service Manager? Why did no one ever say, We re sorry the vehicle didn t live up to your expectations. We ll do everything we can to make it right ? Why were we accused of lying, and the burden of proof laid on us at every step? We did nothing wrong; the transmission had simply failed, and the message to us through this entire process was that Champion Group, and Chrysler, would do anything possible to avoid having to cover the failure under warranty.