I haven't written about the Compass all week out of frustration. It seems that the recurring rear tail light issue is back. This time I figured I'd save you all your sanity and not jump to conclusions. It's been over a week now and I can safely say the light is out. Now it's not impossible that it's just a mere bulb outage, but given the Compass's tail light track record of randomly turning on and off, I'm skeptical.
The real frustration though has been with the service center. I could not get an appointment until mid next week and the operator told me I'd need to stop in prior to that to check if it's a bulb issue first. The service center is not exactly out of the way, but if this is indeed a wiring issue I will have to make two trips to even get someone to give it a serious look. I pointed out that I've already been in twice for this same complaint and he intimated that I'm not the only one.
I'll remain optimistic and keep you posted...
Alison Steinlauf Anziska, Marketing Coordinator
desmolicious says:
04:12 PM, 07/12/07
If you're going to the Jeep dealership in Santa Monica, I wouldn't have too high hopes for their service. They wanted to charge me 5 hours labour to replace my TPS. Something that I did myself in 10 minutes (and 9 of those was figuring out where it was).
scott65 says:
01:39 AM, 07/13/07
A Chrysler product with shoddy build quality? No, I refuse to believe it. :p
steel5blue says:
09:00 AM, 07/13/07
Nobody at edmunds is mechanically inclined enough to take five minutes and check the bulb? Maybe you guys should switch the focus of your website to bicycles.
7driver says:
09:34 AM, 07/13/07
If it's a bulb on the left side of the car, swap it with its twin on the right side of the car and/or vice-versa. If the problem repeats but on the other side of the car, it's a bulb problem. If it persists on the same side of the car then it is a wiring problem.
desmolicious says:
01:45 PM, 07/13/07
Sure Edmunds could fix it themselves... but the whole point of these blogs are to show what the ownership experience would be for the average person. And most peeps just take their still under warranty car down to the dealership when there is any kind of problem.
bimmerjay says:
03:32 PM, 07/13/07
lol I was thinking the same thing desmo, you beat me to it. If you wanted to read about fixing a car yourself, there are other publications for that. The average owner doesn't change their own oil or even check their tire pressures - much less change out a taillight bulb. One thing about Edmunds that you don't get in many other places is commentary on the dealership experience.
steel5blue says:
08:51 AM, 07/14/07
Point taken. Up where I live, however, even the "average person" has at least one friend or relative who is not a complete moron and can check or change the light bulb in a car, and then blog about it. How many blog writers in L.A. does it take...?
ryster says:
02:27 PM, 07/14/07
This is interesting. While the dealership experience is certainly an important part of vehicle ownership, there are certain things that an owner can do themselves even with "new" cars. For example, I drive an '06 Chevy Impala with 14,200 miles on it. I do my own oil changes, change my own air filter...generally TRY to do what I can myself before resorting to the dealer. Barring any severe problems, I only use the dealer for annual state required inspections, tire rotations, or other maintenance requirements I am not equipped at home to take care of.
The average owner should have the basic ability to at least check their tire pressure once a month, fill the washer fluid, check the oil level/dipstick (not necessarily change the oil and filter), visually look at the power steering and brake fluid reservoirs, and check the operation of their external lights. This can all be done in 10 minutes by the average person. I would like for Edmunds to mention the ease of which basic fixes can be done by an owner in addition to dealership experiences.
The dealer cannot be relied upon fully to handle simple things. I have an associate who recently had words with their dealer because their OEM tires on their vehicle were down to the wearbars at 24,000 miles. They perform NO maintenance on their vehicle other than when they take it to the dealer at the mileage on their windshield reminder sticker. They asked the dealer why the tires were worn, the dealer asked if they had ever been rotated, to which the owner responded "How should I know? You do all my maintenance for me!". The dealer said "if you don't tell us to rotate tires, we don't. We only do what you ask us to." So basically the tires had never been rotated and wore out sooner than they needed to. Of course my associate didn't learn anything from this. They still don't know what their tire pressures should be, where to even look for that info, or how frequenly to rotate the tires. Their opinon is that the dealer should know what the vehicle needs based on the odometer reading, and perform those services without the owner having to know such trivial things and ask for it (even though they have an indexed, 200-page book in the glove compartment that tells them what to ask for).
It is scary to me that some vehicle owners rely 100% on dealers to handle every single aspect of maintenance. Just because the vehicle is new and under warranty doesn't mean you can't check some things yourself or at least know some basic things that should be checked if you elect to have the dealer do it all for you.