Great waiting area, great service front desk, TERR...

Great waiting area, great service front desk, TERRIBLE/unprofessional service manager/techs. Sales staff seem nice and not pushy.

On my CX-5, the heater controls hadn't worked properly since day 1. When you tried to turn the dial to defrost, it wouldn't go all the way and would pop back to floor. I brought the car in to Jim Ellis Mazda to have it looked at, and after sitting around for a few hours in the waiting room, I was told the technician "was getting frustrated" and to take a loaner and come back the next day. Upon picking up the car, the dial felt weird; it didn't move smoothly from setting to setting, but it did move all the way to defrost so I assumed it was as fixed as it was going to get. The techs had also managed to gouge the center console down to the white underlayment. I showed this to Jim and he had them paint over the area. Not great, but acceptable. When I got home, I found they had also left white greasy handprints all over the lower dash panels that I had to clean.

A few weeks later, when it got cold and we needed the defrost, we realized that the technician had gotten the dial to move all the way over, but it didn't actually turn on the defrost, and even worse the modes that had worked before no longer worked! The first three settings all directed air to the front blowers, and defrost directed air to the feet, and the mix settings didn't work at all.

So I brought it back to Jim Ellis again. Jim at the service desk was wonderful and great to work with again- I explained to him what had happened and showed him what was going on with the controls and he had the car checked in to service. While I was waiting, Jim came up to me and said "The guys in the back are saying that that's how it's supposed to work."

It took me five minutes of arguing with both the technician and the service manager that setting the dial to floor should not cause the air to blow in your face, and setting it to defrost should not blow on the floor. If they think that's normal, it's no surprise that they thought it was fixed the first time. I've never had to argue with a technician about something that's obviously broken, and I'd have doubt that any repairs they do are fully functioning.

The service desk staff and cashier are great, very professional and pleasant, but where the actual work gets done could certainly use a lot of improvement.

They do give you free loaner cars when they keep your car for a long time, so that part is good at least, but I'm not taking my car back there until they get a new service manager.