Subaru lied and didn't honor warranty for 3+ years

[SubaruAreThieves]

To make a long story short, I bought an extended warranty on a 2015 forester and three separate Subaru dealerships in Colorado failed to recognize the warranty and billed me for work that should have been covered.

After the original warranty, I brought it in to get some work done, and was told by a northern Colorado dealership that I didn't have an extended warranty. I knew that wasn't right; I told them I paid for it, that it had to be in effect. But, the first dealership insisted that I didn't have the warranty.

I asked them if they had done the work yet. They said no. I told them not to do it. They did it anyways without telling me. When I arrived, I had a 1000+ dollar bill. The guy, once again, said we didn't have a warranty but that, "I'll knock 5% off the next time you get work done."

We went to another two dealerships. Both of them lied, saying we didn't have a warranty.

Fast forward three years, my wife was heavily pregnant with twins, when she went in to get some work done. One of the techs was decent enough to admit that we did have a warranty.

So, here we are. My wife and I submitted a complaint and started a case with Subaru of America, (the corporate dealership). Subaru spent 2-3 weeks not calling us back. One of the three dealerships, Dellenbach of Fort Collins, is not responding to corporate and is refusing to provide the documentation.

Initially, we were hopeful. But after speaking to a supervisor at Subaru of America, it's clear that they are deliberately not responding. To any techs, how can a dealership refuse to respond to corporate?

To anyone else, have you heard of this happening before? What are my options?

I loved my Subarus. I'm stunned at the way corporate is handling this. Can anyone help me?

 

[remy6908]

Thats shady, sounds like someone just wanted to get a pay day. I would file a complaint with BBB. I would hope that SOA would do something against that dealer to get your money back. Best of luck on your situation.

 

[SubaruAreThieves]

Thats shady, sounds like someone just wanted to get a pay day. I would file a complaint with BBB. I would hope that SOA would do something against that dealer to get your money back. Best of luck on your situation.

Thank you for respondin!

I want to be very clear that the first SOA rep we were assigned has never gotten in touch with us. He called one time and didn't leave a message. After we were unable to get a hold of him for more than 2 weeks, we escalated the claim.

His supervisor was even worse. The SOA rep was dismissive, tried to blame the situation on us by questioning why we didn't call in as soon as our warranty was denied. My wife and I were stunned. Absolutely stunned. I've never dealt with a more aggressive and adversarial customer service rep in my entire life.

I have zero faith in SOA at this point. They stole the value of our warranty and the cost of at least three relatively major fixes over three years.

I study statistics and data science. I got the SOA rep to agree that both she and the only decent tech at Loveland Subaru had never heard of this happening before. I told her that if an event is unbelievably improbable to the point of it never happening, then when that event happens three separate times across three separate dealerships, it's highly unlikely to be an accident.

She responded, regarding the tech doing the work after I told him not to and denying the warranty, "If anything did happen, it was a mistake." I was shocked. At that point, Dellenbach Subaru hadn't even responded to SOA. I asked her what reason she could possibly have to think this was a mistake if no one from SOA had even gotten a response from Dellenbach yet.

She just short-circuited and said it'd take another week to get a response from Dellenbach and to get back to us.

Apart from the BBB complaint, can anyone think of anything that we can do? This seems pretty simple: a gold plus warranty was ignored at three different dealerships. At this point, we're well beyond the value that small claims court can consider.

Also, the longmont subaru dealership at one point tried to do 6,000+ dollars of work to replace the head gaskets, or something like that, from an oil level issue. First, they also ignored the warranty and tried to bill us for it. We refused the work and took it to another dealership, who said it just needed a new oil flow sensor. The position of SOA, during the first phone call we had with them, was that the solution to Longmont subaru trying to rip us off for 6,000+ and failing to honor our warranty would be "training, so something like this doesn't happen again."

I have zero faith that SOA will do anything to the involved dealerships.

 

[JohnboyIII]

Clearly the dealers you used were scum bags, and the reps and SOA were the same. Get as much data on all these guys, with dates and names, and let them know your are going to sue them.
I got the same kind of service from GM when the engine of my SAAB died. The refused to replace the engine stating that I did not change my oil in accordance with the rules, (10,000 miles unless you are in a particularly dusty enrvironments - like driving dirt section roads in Oklahoma or such - I was driving in Virginia.) I got my all my oil change paperwork (Jiffy Lube provided me a few that I did not have). Then the rigmarole I had gone through at the dealer and their statements (I had those when they refused to declare it a warranty issue), plus photos of all the oit change gear I have (ramps, filter wrenches, etc and such) to counter GM and the dealer. Sent them a three ring binder with copies of their own manual, and all the data I had - told them I was retired and was preparing to sue them. They caved and I had a short block the next week and the same dealer, replaced the engine. I also had data how GM was replacing engines all over Europe and data showing that the rubber used on the crankcase breathing system was faulty and collapsing, and that the catalytic converters were snug up to the oil pan. Their heat was crystallizing the oii in the crankcase and the resulting particles were clogging the oil pickup tube.
If you can document all of this (and I got a helluva lot of information from the Saab Forums, you could solve your problem.