Elaine McMillan

Review of Subaru Canada (Head Office) - ...

This review is a comment on Subaru Canada and not ...

This review is a comment on Subaru Canada and not the dealership. In March of this year a check engine light (CEL) came on. Eventually the car was misfiring, brought it to the dealership for fixing. To make the 5 month saga of my WRX 2017 short, my car remained in the service department at the dealership for 5 months. They performed 2 carbon cleans, a Terra clean, disassembled the engine to inspect and clean the carbon buildup, performed an idle relearn, replaced the left knock sensor, replaced valve seals, center pipe hardware badly corroded, used extractor and air hammer to remove hardware, replaced the EGR assembly, replaced the fuel injectors and who knows what else... this is a less than 3 year old car !!
We were patient at first, we started questioning the service manager at the dealership as to why it was taking so long by the end of April. What we were told is that it was a back and forth exchange of instructions and data between Subaru Canada and the service department of the dealership. They would do one thing then report back to Subaru Canada. After reviewing the data, Subaru Canada would tell them to proceed with another fix.
They returned the car to me by mid August. The dealership replaced the cracked windshield as a goodwill gesture.
At first we accepted the loaner car, however when they asked us to return the loaner as they had sold it, at the end of April, we refused another loaner as we did not want the loaner car to be an excuse to take their time for repairing my WRX
We called the Subaru-Canada client care line, issuing a complaint and asking for compensation after one month of this ordeal. Every time we would call it was the same thing, Subaru Canada was going to repair the car under warranty . How long was it going to take ?? They couldn t answer. By the beginning of July, we were trying to escalate things, wanting to speak to the manager of customer care at Subaru-Canada, to no avail. End of July, beginning of August, the service manager at the dealership admitted that our car was an enigma, they had requested a service engineer from Subaru Canada to come . He never showed up.
I called Subaru-Canada customer care department to see if there was any progress with the service engineer. Since I had started the proceclaim ss with CAMVAP, they responded that they could not do anything for me as my file was with their lawyers !! I then told them to get my file back as I was not going to pursue with a CAMVAP claim and to FIX my car !
I finally took matters in my own hands: by Googling, I found the name of the senior director, after sales at Subaru Canada (which was not easy to find). I emailed this manager, who responded and copied the manager of customer care. My email stated: (1) when would I get my car back repaired as there seemed to be no urgency on the part of Subaru-Canada (2) I wanted Subaru-Canada buyback my vehicle as I did not trust it anymore. A car that takes 5 months to repair, I would never want to drive it on a road trip!
The manager of customer care emailed me and eventually we spoke on the phone. One question I asked was: What is a reasonable time to resolve a warranty issues and repair issues with their vehicles ? The manager did not have a straight forward answer.
My car was returned to me on August 15th, and the customer care manager agreed to discuss monetary compensation. I did not get the amount I thought I deserved; they did not agree to pay for 5 months of depreciation on my vehicle.
As previously mentioned, I no longer trusted this car, so finally I traded the WRX for another vehicle (not a Subaru). While waiting for the new car, we drove it around, but mostly kept it in the garage. The morning we drove it for the trade in, the Check Engine Light returned. I was ecstatic to have traded in this lemon of a car !!!
Subaru Canada s focus has turned towards marketing and advertising and less towards customer service and product reliability. Because of this I would never recommend buying a Subaru vehicle !