My experience with multiple vehicles across brands has been the following. Can they (fca) deny warranty claims if you are under warranty and have properly maintained the vehicle? No. Does the MM act protect you? Yes. But sometimes short of threatening to sue and getting a lawyer, they can make your life extremely difficult.
Here’s why it isn’t as easy as it SHOULD be. All dealerships are independently owned and operated. They have agreements with the manufacturer, in this case FCA, but they aren’t obligated to work on any vehicle. The dealer makes their own independent decisions. FCA can pressure them but at the end of the day if the dealer makes up a bunch of excuses (or lies), the manufacturer will back off and the dealer does whatever they want.
So why would a dealer want to do this if the problem is covered under warranty and they are getting paid for the work anyway? Therein lies the answer. Because the dealer gets paid a fixed rate for jobs. Each issue has a rated number of hours allocated to it. The dealer has to get the issue fixed within those hours, at an agreed upon (reduced) rate. If not, they have to argue with corporate to get additional hours approved, etc.
That’s why when there is an undefined or unknown issue, the dealer doesn’t want to be bothered trying to figure it out, chasing down gremlins and going down rabbit holes. It’s hard for them to bill corporate for that time and again it’s at a reduced rate. So chasing down leaks and noises is going to be of zero interest to most dealers (not all, there are good ones) if it is a warranty issue. If you are paying out of pocket and not under warranty, it’s a whole different story. They will take all the time they need and bill you for it.
Ive been there several times before, not with FCA although I have no expectation they would be any different. I’d have a problem. It’s under warranty. Dealer can’t figure it out. Sorry, move along. Or we found it but we think it’s your fault (which translates to we aren’t going to get paid enough from corporate to fix it so we don’t want to do the work at a reduced rate). Move along. So you call corporate and they tell you that they will “try” to help and yes you are covered under warranty BUT they can’t force the dealer to do anything since they are independently owned. They will try to help you find another more reasonable dealer. That’s fine for the most part if you live somewhere where you can throw a quarter in any direction and hit a dealership but if you live somewhere where the dealers are separated by 100 miles, you better hope the dealer is good to work with because otherwise if you have issues you will learn that your warranty is only worth so much.
Anyway, that’s been my experience with warranties and dealers etc. I have found this to be the case across brands because it’s a dollars and cents thing. They are playing a volume game. Unfortunately no single customer is worth as much as you might like to think. Your experience is highly dependent on: 1
luck 2.) dealer 3.) location 4.) willingness and ability to argue 5.) willingness and ability to litigate if necessary
end rant. YMMV
