re: Woman catches mechanics at Kia of Lake Charles taking parts from her vehicle

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To troubleshoot another vehicle. They had a different KIA in the shop and weren’t sure what would fix the problem

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This is why they have expensive diagnostic machines with proprietary software to diagnose the problem along with a multitude of trouble shooting guides. There is absolutely no need to be pulling parts off of one vehicle and putting them on another. Why create double the work? I also have a very hard time believing a dealership would have an aversion to ordering a part just to save money because charging a premium for parts is a cornerstone of their business model

Worst part is the Service Manager that was let go was no doubt following the orders of upper management.

Ma'am, I don't know you, but kudos to you for calling this out. What an absolute shitty practice.

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I certainly hope this is an isolated dealership

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We had a similar but less extreme bad experience at a Kia dealership in the DC area. Got sick of bringing our good cars into DC to get beat up and were looking at a beater that Kia had on the lot in Woodbridge. They were sleazy af (even for a dealership) and we left.

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“We replaced them for free”

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That was the most cringeworthy part of the whole video.

Stealerships need to cease to exist.

Oooops! The dude got caught. Tells the lady to put the phone down.

I follow the "Stay Dirty" site on YouTube. The guy owns a private auto repair shop and chronicals the difficulty of working on modern vehicles. In addition to mechanics having to be a wrench monkeys they now have to be proficient at coding. Plus trying to find the parts for these modern vehicles is becoming difficult. All this designed to do one thing - force the owners to take their vehicles to the dealer to get it worked on.

According to this "Stay Dirty" guy the biggest trouble he sees with these new cars brought in? Those fancy 8 speed automatic transmissions. He spends a big part of his time on repair jobs reading code on a computer screen.

Apparently, this lady stumbled upon a new scam - Dealer Auto Service Shops stealing parts from vehicles. What a mess.

Stay Dirty!

Thats some crazy s***t.

Ive been in Mechanic Shops all my life. Except up to the last 4 years.
I havent seen that level of crazy right there.

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It’s a typical maintenance practice when the technicians aren’t trained to properly troubleshoot issues.

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That, and the practice of compensating techs by the flat rate pay scale. If a tech can shortcut a repair by just replacing a suspected part as the corrective action, he will do it rather than going through a dozen or more steps to ensure the part is the issue. Sometimes this works and he has made more money because he completed the job in less time than the book rate called out and his boss is happy the vehicle is out of his shop. When it becomes the norm, it can possibly lead to bad results.

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It happens all the time in the aircraft world, but clearly they are canibalizing their own planes, not a customers.

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Yes, it happens on their own fleet, but that is a very controlled process. Everything is documented with signatures and traceability with the components removed and installed before the aircraft is returned to service.

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Wait a second.

“Dropped her truck off”

When did Kia start making trucks?

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Some people call their SUVs trucks. I play golf with a black guy that calls his Tahoe a truck.

Anyone know what the resolution was?

They'd have to give me a new vehicle with a lifetime full warranty to make it right. I'd have every local news outlet doing public interest stories on this dealership. Disassembling an engine that is running fine is stupid for any reason. Even more so if it's someone else's.