Marathon Chevrolet

I bought a new 2005 Chevy Impala and had many problems. Bad tie rod ends at 33,000 mi, bad rotors at 35,000 mi, and bad ISS at 30,000 mi. You would stop sometimes and when you started off, the engine would rev up, load, and then the transmission would engage hard and lurch forward. Sometimes, the car would shut off when you slowed to stop but would always start back up. I started taking it back to the dealer, at that time was Chevy North, but was sold out to Marathon Chevy. They would drive the car and say that they could not do any of the problems; therefore, they cannot do anything. I asked them had anyone else had a problem like this and they would always say that they have not heard of any. All of this was before 36,000 miles.

I told them I wanted these complaints entered into the computer to have on record. They always said, "You don't need to worry, that's been done." The dealer paid for the rotors and tie rod ends to be repaired. I paid for the ISS to be replaced, even though their other dealership agreed to pay half but changed their mind and said that I had gone over the 36,000 mi. I told them to pull the records and sure enough, they never entered my complaints.

I requested to talk to the district rep and they said I was not allowed to talk to them. They had to call the rep and would get back to me. Sure enough, the rep agreed with them. I asked for the factory number and talked with the reps there and they were unable to help. I traded the car and bought another brand. These type of problems are all over the Internet on different sites, starting from late '90s through now. How can a company get by with all these problems for so many years? Can a class action suit be brought against GM? Only in America!

I pulled gas from the tank and found no water left in the tank. I added 12oz of water remover, and 6oz of Lucas fuel treatment. Started it many times until it stayed running. Drove to the gas station put 6 gal. of super in the tank and was running like new! the next day was driven about 25 miles and check engine light went out, no more problems. The mechanic at the dealer gave my step-daughter a bottle with gas pulled from the vehicle supposedly with 30% water in it, but what looked like water was on top of the gas. Very strange since water is heaver than gas!

On January 6, 2007, my wife and I began or track of looking at some cars we had investigated from the previous week. We narrowed it down to 2 and stopped at Marathon Chevrolet of Summerville, South Carolina.

One of their salesmen, Steve Smith, met us as we were looking at a new 2006 Cobalt. After talking with Steve for an hour and giving him our personal information (including our social security number) to determine our monthly payment, we told him we were also on our way to another lot to look at another vehicle. Steve was going to call us once he had figured out our payment. He asked if he could get our payments where we wanted them would we be willing to turn around and come back. I told him I would.

He called us about 10 minutes later and said the payments would be $20 more per month than what we were wanting and he said that it was only $20 more?, but we were not willing to budge at that point.

We went to the other lot and as they were preparing the car for us to test drive, I received another call from Steve saying they had a car on the lot just like what we were currently looking at and had forgotten about it and only remembered once his manager told him about it. I told him that we were going to test drive this one and once we were done I would call him. I did call him we had decided to look at the car he said we could have in our budget ($299 for 60 months). I told him that if that was true then we could return to the lot and test drive that particular vehicle.

We spent almost 2 hours with him test driving the car and rediscussing finances. Steve went to the finance area and returned saying that we were going to be upset with him because they payments he had told us was going to have to be for 72 months instead of the 60 he had used to lure us back to the dealership and if we wanted the payments for only the 60 months we would have to pay $350 per months instead of the $299.

After we weren't willing to budge, his finance manager came to us and asked us what car were we looking at before and why did we like it verses the one they had. He told my wife and I that they had made a mistake in quoting us our payments. I told him they only lied to us to get us to return and must have hoped after wasting our time we would give in. I told him we were leaving and within 2 hours we were going to purchase a car. If they wanted to honor their promise to us to call us. I told them if they did not honor their word to us I would no longer have our vehicles serviced at their dealership.

I also called the head manager that day after leaving and explained the situation to him and asked is he was gong to honor their word and he said he was sorry they had misquoted us but would not honor they price given us by Steve Smith.

We purchased the second vehicle we looked at that day.

The purpose in this letter is to file an official complaint against Marathon Chevrolet of Summerville for what I feel was a breech of contract and right out moral issues.

Any direction you can assist me in filing this complaint to the proper office will be greatly appreciated.