Older vehicles are susceptible to in-depth repairs, such as engine and transmission replacements, which take much longer than repairing an air conditioner or an oil change. The average age of cars on the road is older than ever before at 12.2 years old, so dealerships and after-market repair shops are getting more service requests. has managed to keep a large supply of loaner cars, Sewell said.īrinkman is supposed to get her car back next week with a working air conditioner.Ī lack of new cars over the last two years has led to more people extending the leases on their cars and driving vehicles they already own for longer. The part was there, so she took her car in when Audi McKinney had an available loaner. The repair stopped working sooner than expected, so Brinkman called a week later to ask whether the evaporator had arrived. Audi McKinney did a temporary fix on the air conditioner so Brinkman could use her car with working air conditioning until the part arrived, which is something that Carl Sewell, the chairman and CEO of Sewell Motor Co., which owns Auto McKinney, says his dealer group gives customers the option to do if the car is safe.
Her car needed a new air-conditioning evaporator, but that was on back order. McClure also said that when parts show up, it’s faster to have the car on the lot already.īrinkman instead took her car to Audi McKinney to get serviced, where she ran into a parts shortage. Each car is under Audi Dallas’ insurance when a repair order is placed on it, so the dealership is liable for anything that happens to the car during the repair process. The reason cars have to stay with the dealership is tied to insurance liability and queuing, according to McClure. Usually, it’s within a couple days, but sometimes we have to take longer because we can’t get parts,” McClure said. And when I say that, it’s not typical that we take that long to do anything.
They were turning around some requests much faster than expected, often in 48 hours, so the seven days was an inaccurate overestimate. McClure explained that he recently told his service advisers to stop telling customers that it would take seven days for them to get their cars looked at. “It would have been done a lot sooner than seven days,” Audi Dallas parts and service director Daniel McClure said in an email to The Dallas Morning News. That’s what was disappointing,” Brinkman said.Īudi Dallas responded to Brinkman’s Yelp comment about her experience and cited the supply chain, chip shortage and the increase in service requests as reasons why Brinkman couldn’t have a loaner car and why the turnaround time was so long. “You can’t expect me to show up and tell me it’s going to be seven days minimum and not tell me that I have to find another car. And there was no loaner vehicle for her to use. Brinkman made an appointment to get her vehicle’s air conditioning fixed at Audi Dallas in June, only to be told that she had to leave her car at the dealership for at least seven days before they could take a look at it. “From a dealer’s point of view, it’s not a comfortable time that we’re in because it doesn’t allow us to take care of the customers like we normally could, and it is a concern,” said Charlie Gilchrist, who owns 13 car dealerships in Dallas-Fort Worth and is chairman of the North Texas Automobile Dealers.ĭallas resident Uta Brinkman experienced some of the disruption Gilchrist is talking about. Now add supply chain issues, and dealers and customers alike have a massive headache that spares no car manufacturer, car dealer or vehicle owner. The auto industry was already dealing with a shortage of certified automotive technicians before the COVID-19 pandemic. “I have never experienced anything that is this widespread and lasted this long,” said Dane Minor, general manager of Freeman Toyota in Hurst, Texas, and a 33-year veteran of the industry.
And many dealerships don’t have adequate supplies of loaner cars to give because their supply of new and used cars is already strained. The parts needed to service those cars are on back order.
The auto industry, like many others, is in the midst of a perfect storm of misfortunes.Ĭustomers are experiencing long wait times to get their cars serviced.
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