redkanga

Back in December, Katie and I purchased a new Jeep Grand Cherokee. We both liked the size, comfort and styling of the car. It handled well during the test drive and felt considerable more nimble that other SUV’s that we had test driven or drove in the past. We also got a pretty darn decent deal on the car. Long story short, we thought we had made a good purchase. It was also a plus that Katie’s back problems disappeared along with our previous car, a Nissan Altima.

I ended up with a day off last week so Katie, her parents and I decided we would take a field trip to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. It was a fairly warm day and our car being a dark blue color was heating up nicely in the sun. Katie decided to turn on the A/C for a little bit and that was when my ankles began to freeze. Thinking that the climate controls were not adjusted to use that dash vents, I looked over at the dash and noticed that everying was set quite correctly. After monkeying with the controls for a few minutes I grabbed my cell phone and made a call to our dealer’s service department. They agreed that my ankles should not be getting frost bite when the dash vents are in use and we scheduled a service appointment for Monday morning.

Over the weekend Katie and I made a list of a few other things we had noticed that could be looked at while the car is in the shop. Monday morning, list in hand, I went to the dealership and handed over the car to my service adviser. He said that they would look at my issues and fix my car. Woohoo, I thought. I even got the rental that is specified in my extended warranty.

However, Monday afternoon I found out that they believed the A/C behavior to be normal… I disagreed and told my service advisor that I would not have purchased the car if it had frozen my ankles when I test drove it. I was wearing shorts at the time and living in Southern California where the temperature is often warm I made sure to test the A/C. The service advisor mentioned that another Jeep Grand Cherokee on the lot exhibited the same behavior. I said, “uh really? Have you checked all the Grand Cherokees on the lot to see if they all exhibit this behavior?” He meekly admitted that he had not and said that they would investigate further.

Tuesday rolled around and they were still looking into the problem. My service advisor told me that he was getting the service manager involved and that they would be calling corporate technical services (or something like that) for guidance. I thought we were making progress. I made no attempt to contact my service advisor on Wednesday morning since I was sleeping. I got a call from him on my way to the job site. He basically told me that they haven’t got a clue what’s wrong but did admit that there seemed to be a problem. Progress… maybe… So he tell’s me that they are going to request that a service engineer from the home office come out to take a look at the car, but that won’t be for another 2 to 4 weeks.

So tomorrow I go pick up my still broken car and wait for my next appointment. Hopefully we don’t need to use the A/C too much, I like my ankles to stay warm…