Hey, don't get me wrong, I think the Married to the Mob soundtrack is excellent, same goes for the Midnight Oil tape I found in my garage but shouldn't the CD changer be fixed by now? Yes, it should - plus, I'm running out of "really good" tapes.
Here's how the trouble has played out. July - we take the van in for diagnosis. We're told we need a new stereo head unit and that one will be ordered. A week later Kia of Long Beach calls and says the part has arrived. Sadly, when we arrive we're told the wrong part was sent. "We'll call you when the right part gets here." Fine. One. two, three weeks go by and no phone call. When we call, we're told our service advisor no longer works there. "Can someone else help me?" we ask. "Sure" straight to voicemail. Call later and still straight to voicemail - this happens four more times the same day.
In frustration we ask to speak to an actual person - "Is the service manager available?" we ask. "Sure," straight to voice mail. We call back "can we talk to a real person?" "Sure, I'll have to put you on hold." 35 min later still no real person. When we do finally speak to a real person we're greeted with apolgies and concern. "I'll call you back once I check to see if the correct part ever arrived." No call. That was two weeks ago.
Last Monday we started from scratch and simply made a new service appointment. Four days out was the soonest they could see us even though the service bays were not full and our Sedona was the only car in the entire service drive at 8:30 AM on a Thursday. Today we picked up the Sedona and got the shocking news that, sure enough, our CD player is broken. "We'll order the part and call you when it arrives." Hmmmm.
To the dealership's credit, the people have always been very nice and it seems like the place is under new ownership as the parts dept is full of boxes that are half unpacked. We're willing to give our neighborhood Kia dealer one last chance. Cross your fingers for good news in the next few weeks.
Brian Moody @ 13,156 miles with fingers crossed.
jerrywimer says:
05:11 AM, 10/27/06
Those boxes in the parts dept aren't from new ownership- they're from all the "incorrect" parts that have been shipped in response to orders for customers' problems! :-P
tsgeisel says:
11:58 AM, 10/27/06
Well, at least it's a dealership issue, and not specifically a vehicle issue (more or less). I'll also note that the cassette adapters for iPods (or your preferred portable music player) work better than FM transmitters, so you could be going with that option as well. It's almost like having an aux port, but better in some ways, because who wants to steal a cassette player?
briancam says:
11:37 PM, 10/27/06
Yes, it's really sad that the service is soooo poor because the van itself is pretty good. If our radio was fixed right the first time we'd barely even be thinking about it for the better part of 2006. The Sedona is great value but what's the real cost in terms of service>?
thebigal says:
07:12 PM, 10/28/06
Good thing that ain't my Van. I don't remember the last time I listened to a cassette tape. I would be screwed. Most of my stuff comes from Itunes burned onto discs. I don't even listen to the radio because of XM. Even if the thing was under warranty I probably would have ripped out the factory head unit and replaced it with a more capable after market unit.
briancam says:
07:43 PM, 10/28/06
You know the Sedona's stereo is pretty good the way it sits. Our Long Termer has the optional 605 watt Infinity audio system which includes surround sound and 13 speakers. If we could just get the dealer to fix it we'd be thrilled w/ the system. In a pinch we can also play CDs or DVD-A through the rear DVD player but it's a real hassle - nice sound though.
vvk says:
09:05 AM, 11/ 1/06
I suggest you visit you local library and get some books on tape. I only wish my BMW had a tape player.