JT$ sent me this link:
XT Family at International

A few months ago, I brought our TrailBlazer into Les Stanford Chevrolet, in Dearborn, MI. There is a vibrating noise that occurs in the front end when you slowly accelerate in first and second gear. Anyway, they didn’t fix the problem, and I didn’t bother to call back Mike, the service writer. Anyway, what I DID do was send them a “0″ on the survey that Chevrolet (or the dealership, I forgot) sent me.

Well, when I brought the TrailBlazer back in there at lunch, he was upset that I reported a “0″ on the survey and that I should’ve called him before doing that, as it makes the dealership’s service department, and him, look bad. Well, I didn’t apologize, per se, and I even went as far as asking for a loaner, since I had to bring this back after the first attempt didn’t work. Well, this is when he mentioned the “0″ on the survey. I asked him if that made the difference in the loaner, and he said that it was a Chevrolet policy he couldn’t break. You what? F him. I’m in convenience with this whole thing. So, they are going to take the truck in tomorrow morning, drive me to work with their shuttle, and then I’ll probably get screwed and they’ll call me at 5:59PM saying the vehicle is ready, since I kind of screwed them with the survey, right?

Okay, so I take the Saab back to Belle Tire yesterday to get my wheels back, once and for all… Guess what? They called me saying the wheels came back and they weren’t fully refinished. I had to go back there and get my car, with the nasty chrome Pulse wheels that wobble at high speeds.

What a nightmare. So, to save about $80 by ordering tires online and having them mounted locally, I ended up spending at least 4 hours of my time to get the tires mounted and now the Saab OEM wheels fixed. Lesson learned!

Okay, so they were kind enough to correct the problem they caused to my Saab wheels. I took my car there yesterday to get that process started. They told me it’d be about :45 to get the wheels swapped. WRONG! It took them about 2:15 to get the car back to me. I was pretty upset. On top of that, when I was driving home on the Southfield FWY, my wheels were wobbling at speeds above 50mph. I was too far to head back and have them fix it, plus, I didn’t want them delaying my life any more than it was already delayed. They told me to bring it into the store on Thursday morning. Well, I did that. Took about :57 minutes to get the car back to me. They put in some plastic rings that helped to center the wheels to my hubs. Well, it doesn’t wobble as much, and it seems to only wobble at speeds above 70mph. They said they’d call me tomorrow morning, as they’d have my wheels back at that time. What a mess. All this because I wanted to save a few bucks and order the tires online and them have a shop that didn’t sell me the tires mount them. Discount Tire’s never done me wrong. Oh well.

I can’t believe this turn of events… for ONCE, something worked out in my favor in the consumer marketplace!

A few weeks back, I had to get some new tires for the Saab. I decided to be cheap and get some Sumitomos instead of the OEM Pirelli P-Zero Rossos they put on at the factory. It was a big difference in cost. Anyway, I had the Belle Tire on Michigan Avenue, near Outer Dr., mount them. Shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it took quite some time, almost two hours. I’m sure part of this was waiting to get the car in the garage.

Anyway… I was cleaning the Saab the other day, first time in a long time, over a month and a half, I think, and I noticed that while cleaning the wheels, there were gouges near each and every valve stem (count it: four!). Crazy. I knew that I had one gouge on the outer rear left wheel, from a car wash track that I drove into and steered too far left.

Anway… I decided that I needed to at least ASK Belle Tire about this problem and see if they could do it. I thought about just going there and asking them about it, in person, but I thought I’d get a poor response. Instead, I went to Belle Tire’s website and filled out the Contact Us form. “Yeah, right!” is what I thought.

Anyway… I was flabbergasted when I received a call from the manager of the store yesterday asking me about what happened. He told me to bring the car in today, near lunchtime, and he’d have a look and see if he couldn’t get me taken care of.

I took the car there at about 11:30, met with Tom and Hectore, and showed them the gouged wheels. They are going to give me loaner wheels tomorrow (ones that will at least look cool, Tom said) and send my wheels out to get refinished! That means even the scuff or two that I caused on my own will get fixed! Total cost: $380-500.

I’m very thankful it was handled this way. The letter I wrote to them was very courteous and professional. I hope that had something to do with this.

On a side note, I have slight migracious brewing…