2022 Tahoe w- 7950 miles dead in the road

[PNW-FL Wanderer]

Hello again friends,

Apologies for the delay. But I finally have an ending to the story to share. Or maybe the beginning of a new story.

After 30 days, 2 hours, and 9 minutes, officially making the vehicle a lemon under Florida law, giving me the right to have the vehicle repurchased, the dealership called for the first time to announce that the car had been fixed. 30 days after it arrived dead on a flatbed. (note: service tech "swears" he called at some point to say he had ordered the parts. When I asked what he would want to tell the manager tomorrow when we reviewed my file, there was suddenly free detailing services and future oil changes on the table in exchange for my silence....LOL). Before engaging him further, I asked he send over the repair order.

This sudden "contact" from the dealership was after I had sent GM a certified letter, pursuant to FL lemon law, putting them on notice of my intent to force their repurchase of my vehicle. Also spoke with GM about what was going on. Apparently they had better luck getting in touch with the dealership. If your curious as to whether GM had any urgency, I was actually fairly stunned at their general lack of there of. If I was GM, I would be working around the clock to make sure we didn't end up having to repurchase a car, forget the customer service aspect of things.

A cursory review of the repair order shows that this was a bad "fuel pump module". Funny, I seem to have read about that issue a few times on this board. Dealership explained that the part is on back order across the country. Why is that? It makes me a little irked that GM likely knows about this problem and rather than issue any type of warning or recall just sort of waits around to see which pumps are "bad".

Anyways, I went to pick up the truck today and found that the windshield wiper fluid pump was broken (also an issue I'D on this board, thank you all!). So, while I cannot say its "riding fine" again because I did not get to drive it home, apparently the fuel pump issue has been resolved? And now we move on to the next one.

I am pursuing a lemon law claim, which starts with filing a claim with the BBB auto line mediation service. I am sure the car will get fixed within the next few weeks, but since its legally a lemon there seems to be little incentive to keep this one and hope for the best when you can get a new one and see how that one does. Yes, for those curious, I will absolutely be looking to get another GMC Yukon/Chevy Tahoe. Call me crazy, but nobody has ever bought TWO lemons in a ROW right? And to those who said you will have headaches with any vehicle so you better love it....thanks for that, you are absolutely right. And I do love these cars (when they are operating).

Best of luck to all of you as we play the GM Hunger Games, may the odds be ever in your favor!

 

[StephenPT]

Fuel pump control module failure has now come up more than a few times on this forum... Interesting that the dealer says its on national backorder and yet it's available on RockAuto (2 business day delay) and also comes up as available on E-Bay. Seems to be the same module diesel or gas. At the price of $45 to the consumer, GM is probably spending no more than $15 on this module - can't imagine the PCB, ICs and other circuit components are "high quality" at that price point. I can't confirm, but it does look like it's a plug-and-play module. There's a symbol GM has on their modules which indicates if they require programming and I don't see it on this one. At $45, it might be worth having one in the cargo storage bin along with a 10mm wrench - it's pretty easy access on the outboard LH frame approx. @ b-pillar line.

 

[PNW-FL Wanderer]

As some may be able to tell, I am not a very mechanical person and have little to no skill understanding or troubleshooting "car parts", hence the purchase of a new car.

I also realize I no longer have the luxury of being ignorant, so I am working on it. That being said, I was stunned when I read @StephenPT 's comments and looked into it a bit more.

So, let me get this right, my car sat at the dealership for a month because of a $45 part? That is absolutely correct. And the cost of the part per the repair order? $35 dollars. Again, let us throw out any commitment to customer service. In order to save $10, GM was willing to risk a Lemon arbitration, which in the end may have them repurchasing or replacing a vehicle for 80k, in order to save $10? Aside from being ignorant about car mechanics, I am also not that informed about corporate governance or math, but I would call that textbook "juice ain't worth the squeeze".

In other news, they apparently were able to find a wiper fluid pump the same day it was discovered broken. And I drove home this morning without an issue.

End of the story? Maybe.

Thank you to all for your comments, I may not have loved some of them at the time, but each and every one of them helped me learn something about car ownership and for that I am grateful.

 

[Z15]

Unfortunately GM does NOT care about the individual customer who is just one small spec in their vast kingdom. They pass that on to the dealer and very few dealers give a rats arse about the customer. The salesmen earn bonus's for selling and the service managers get bonus's for reducing warranty costs. Been there and the reason I will never ever buy another Chevrolet after the dealer debacle with a Silverado Z71. Once when recurring problems with the Z71 I found out the Service manager was on a Hawaii vacation he earned by being one of the top 10 dealers in the zone with fewest warranty claims.

 

[B-train]

I'd lemon it and let them enjoy that $80k juice. I agree with @Z15 in that the incentives are in the wrong locations to grow customer loyalty. In know not all are like that, I've had great service at the dealership I have friends at (friends may be the key phrase though).

I hate to be petty, but sometimes I feel these companies need to take it in the shorts once in awhile to get their focus readjusted.

 

[GMCnewbee]

I have seen posts here wondering if anyone at GM monitors this Forum. I certainly hope so. The absurdity of some of these Dealer and GM issues is really hard to believe. Thank you so much for letting us all know what has been going on, and I am very sorry that you had to go through all of that. Thanks also to everyone for their comments, experiences, etc. That is what a Forum like this is all about. Thankfully my 2022 Denali has been doing just fine, which makes me feel a little guilty sometimes.

 

[WalleyeMikeIII]

As some may be able to tell, I am not a very mechanical person and have little to no skill understanding or troubleshooting "car parts", hence the purchase of a new car.

I also realize I no longer have the luxury of being ignorant, so I am working on it. That being said, I was stunned when I read @StephenPT 's comments and looked into it a bit more.

So, let me get this right, my car sat at the dealership for a month because of a $45 part? That is absolutely correct. And the cost of the part per the repair order? $35 dollars. Again, let us throw out any commitment to customer service. In order to save $10, GM was willing to risk a Lemon arbitration, which in the end may have them repurchasing or replacing a vehicle for 80k, in order to save $10? Aside from being ignorant about car mechanics, I am also not that informed about corporate governance or math, but I would call that textbook "juice ain't worth the squeeze".

In other news, they apparently were able to find a wiper fluid pump the same day it was discovered broken. And I drove home this morning without an issue.

End of the story? Maybe.

Thank you to all for your comments, I may not have loved some of them at the time, but each and every one of them helped me learn something about car ownership and for that I am grateful.

My guess is they didn't want to try and save $10 on the part; but rather there is some corporate bureaucracy requiring warranty parts to be sourced from some "internal" source (meaning, not having already been sold to a parts distributor, but rather from GM's own parts inventory). Net, it could be that your dealer had no choice but to order the warranty part through the warranty parts channel. And in that channel, the part was not available.

Now, I don't know this for sure; but I am guessing the dealer doesn't get reimbursed for parts or labor for warranty repairs unless they follow the GM designated warranty procedure...so...because the part wasn't available via the warranty parts supply chain, your situation happened. Could this be improved; one would think. But, if you look at it from GM's perspective, they are probably trying to avoid a bunch of parts resellers buying up parts, then reselling them back to GM at a profit...

Regardless, you are correct, that it affected the customer experience....and that should be a priority for a customer buying an $80k+ vehicle...

 

[Stbentoak]

I’ve been through this story before. When I needed a certain part, there was one within 80 miles, but the other dealership wouldn’t part with it, they were that hard to get. So we had to wait the official channel route, which actually took about 2 1/2 weeks.
I also had another time about two weeks ago, where I needed a hose for my fuel tank that came out of Michigan. The vehicle was down and they would not send it overnight. 3 to 5 days to get there and of course no loaner.

 

[StephenPT]

As some may be able to tell, I am not a very mechanical person and have little to no skill understanding or troubleshooting "car parts", hence the purchase of a new car.

I also realize I no longer have the luxury of being ignorant, so I am working on it. That being said, I was stunned when I read @StephenPT 's comments and looked into it a bit more.

So, let me get this right, my car sat at the dealership for a month because of a $45 part? That is absolutely correct. And the cost of the part per the repair order? $35 dollars. Again, let us throw out any commitment to customer service. In order to save $10, GM was willing to risk a Lemon arbitration, which in the end may have them repurchasing or replacing a vehicle for 80k, in order to save $10? Aside from being ignorant about car mechanics, I am also not that informed about corporate governance or math, but I would call that textbook "juice ain't worth the squeeze".

In other news, they apparently were able to find a wiper fluid pump the same day it was discovered broken. And I drove home this morning without an issue.

End of the story? Maybe.

Thank you to all for your comments, I may not have loved some of them at the time, but each and every one of them helped me learn something about car ownership and for that I am grateful.

Curious - does your repair order mention anything about programming the fuel pump control module? Also, does it mention the part number they installed?

 

[Fless]

Bet it requires programming. Also just now it's out of stock at RA.