Approximately three months ago I began to research Dodge Chargers and the options available. I decided to purchase a Granite Pearl colored Charger, large engine but not supercharged, eight speed automatic transmission, adaptive cruise, leather seats, power everything, large brakes with black calipers, and 9.5 inch wide wheels. I searched the internet and found three vehicles that matched what I wanted exactly. One was in Nappanee, Indiana, one was in Cerritos, California and one was in Beaverton, Oregon. In June I went to my local dealer, Yakima Dodge and met a salesman named Denio Hurst. I immediately liked his demeanor and his knowledge level of his product. Keep in mind, I had been researching these cars for a couple of months so I was pretty knowledgeable myself. Denio showed me a Charger with a V-6 engine and the Rallye package in the correct granite color and I was interested but still wanted the 392 engine. He stated that they had a Scat Pack 392 in granite color coming in and I might want to look at it. A month went by and the Scat Pack arrived. My wife and I immediately went to the dealership and drove the granite Scat Pack. We fell in love with it but we really wanted the adaptive cruise control included in the technology package. Denio began looking for a car that matched what we wanted and I told him there was one in Beaverton. It was a Daytona package but satisfied my other option desires. He suggested that the decals could be removed easily. He also suggested that they try to dealer trade for the car in Beaverton and if they could get it would I take it? I said yes. On or about July 3rd, Yakima Dodge contacted Beaverton and inquired about the trade. Beaverton said that they had someone looking at the car so they weren’t interested in trading it. Denio called me and told me to wait a few days because Beaverton might not sell it and would hopefully trade it in the near future. On Saturday afternoon, July 8th, Denio telephoned me and stated that Beaverton had just called and that they would trade their car for the Scat Pack Yakima had. He asked when I could come up to fill out the paperwork. We arranged to meet the following morning July 9th. (As a side note, Denio does not normally work Sundays but he agreed to come in to close the deal because he knew I had been waiting and was anxious to purchase the car.) On July 9th, we met at the dealership and I purchased the car (Car #1) still in Beaverton, but with the understanding that in the next couple of days Yakima would drive their Scat Pack down and bring my car back.

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I financed a good portion of the purchase but I wrote a check for $6,990.03 as a down payment. I left the Yakima dealership with my contract and all of the paperwork you normally leave a dealership with when you purchase a car. On Tuesday morning, July 11th, Denio called and told me that they had driven their Scat Pack to Beaverton, but Beaverton said they had sold the car and had offered a different car for the trade. Different color, different options. Yakima Dodge then drove their own Scat Pack back to Yakima after having put 400 miles on their new car for nothing. I was disappointed and considered calling the Oregon State Patrol to report my new car as stolen. I had a purchase contract and my down payment check was clearing the bank that morning, but I had no car. Yakima Dodge pleaded with me not to do so and promised to find me another car. At approximately four P.M. later that day Denio called me and said they had found a car that was pretty close to what I wanted and the car was located in Elk Grove, California. The Yakima dealership would buy the car and buy an airline ticket for me to fly down and drive the car back. I was already aware of the car in Elk Grove and still had it book marked on my computer. I had looked at it earlier but had dismissed it because it did not have the “dynamics package”. (Namely nine and a half inch wheels versus the nine inch wheels, red brake calipers not black, and only four piston brakes on the front instead of six piston brakes.) My wife and I discussed it and since our check had already cleared, I wanted a new Dodge Charger, and this was pretty close to what I wanted, I agreed to buy the car. (Car #2) On Tuesday, July 11th, after careful consideration to my predicament, I contacted the FCA Customer Assistance Center concerning the transaction. I complained that I had purchased a car but did not have a car. I was hoping that Dodge could put the “Dynamics Package” on this new car, therefore making it the same as what I wanted. I also entered a poor rating on www.dealerrater.com concerning the Beaverton dealership. (My review is easy to find, just search Oregon dealerships until you find Northwest Jeep Chrysler Dodge.) Here is what I wrote:

"Reneged on Deal" - Nathan Bridges Searched for certain vehicle and Beaverton had one. My local dealer agreed to dealer trade their car for the one in Beaverton. I purchased the car at my local dealer, paid for it and everything. The following day my dealer took their car to Beaverton to complete the agreed trade and found out that Beaverton sold "my" car to somebody else after they agreed to the trade and after I had purchased it. Beware of this dealership! My dealer had to scramble to get me a similar car to fulfill their contract with me. All of these hassles because Beaverton would not keep their word. I will be writing to Dodge as well so that they can be aware of the lack of integrity. On Wednesday, July 12th, I drove again to Yakima and bought the car (Car #2) in Elk Grove, California. Yakima Dodge basically tore up the old contract for Car #1 and replaced it with a new contract for Car #2, keeping my original down payment. The dealership purchased a one way airline ticket for me and I kicked in an additional $240 so my wife could accompany me. Mr. Jack Kemp closed my deal and handled the paperwork and everything went very smoothly and was exactly as expected. My wife and I were scheduled to fly to California on July 21st to pick up the new car. Meanwhile, Robert McGrain from Beaverton responded to my one star review with the following: Northwest Jeep Chrysler Dodge responded This is Robert McGrain at Beaverton’s Northwest Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram. I have read your review and spoken to our General Sales Manager. When the Yakima dealership originally inquired about the Dodge Charger you wanted, we told them we had a few customers interested in the vehicle and we were not willing to trade it. However, we had a similar one available and emailed Yakima an invoice to verify the equipment on July 9th at 5:23 p.m. When the dealer came to our store on July 11th to execute the dealer trade, they thought it was the original car, which we never agreed to trade. I apologize for the confusion, but we never agreed to trade the Charger.

I responded to Mr. McGrain the following day:

Nathan Bridges responded Dear Robert McGrain, thanks for responding. I am aware that your dealership had someone looking at the car. My dealership told me that and said that we had to wait to see if it sold there or not. I waited four days. On Saturday, July 8th, your dealership called Yakima and said they would make the trade for their Scat Pack. Saturday late afternoon, my dealer called me and said they had just gotten the call. I bought the car July 9th at 10:00 AM. That is seven and a half hours before you sent the invoice for the replacement car. Either you, or one of your employees, is not telling the truth. Your dealership cost me an extra $500 as I am now flying to California and driving a similar car back. Send me a check! I did everything correct and I got screwed. I am the customer. That shouldn't happen.

Mr. McGrain responded to my response and showed his true colors with this: Northwest Jeep Chrysler Dodge responded Nathan, We are very disappointed that the dealer in Yakima did not clearly understand that we had customers looking at that vehicle and that dealer trading it was not an option for us. This Charger is relatively rare and we ordered it to retail to our customers. We are under no obligation to dealer trade a vehicle, we do this as a courtesy to other dealers. It is store policy to not dealer trade a vehicle that customers in our area are interested in. He admits that it is a rare car and that he is keeping it only for only their customers. He never explains why Yakima Dodge would drive their brand new car 200 miles one way just to turn around and drive back. Someone is not telling the truth in Beaverton. One interesting note, as of right this minute, the car is still for sale in Beaverton. It has not been sold, even though they told Yakima that it had been. It is still listed on their dealer website. I decided not to continue to argue with him. Friday July 21st was slow in coming. I was anxious to get my new car, even if it wasn’t exactly what I had set out to buy. (Car #2 was lacking the 9.5 inch wheels, etc.) On Friday, July 21, Jenna at FCA customer assistance offered me a customer care package for replacement keys and such. I considered accepting but wanted to wait until I got home to be sure everything went well with the delivery of car #2. My wife and I woke up at three A.M. to catch the 5:15 A.M. flight out of Yakima on our way to Sacramento. Yakima to Seattle to Portland to Sacramento, with a three hour layover in Portland got us to Sacramento at 1:15 P.M. Elk Grove Dodge had a driver there waiting for us and took us straight to the dealership. At the dealership, Mr. Victor Macias met us, determined that we were actually the buyers of Car #2, not just dealer trading it, and immediately set about making sure the car was washed and ready to be driven back to Washington as they would do with any of their own customers. Car #2 refused to start. They jump started it but something was still wrong. They installed a new battery but it was still acting up. It would start sometimes and not start other times. Victor refused to send us off in a car that might have issues and kept the car overnight so the Elk Grove technicians could determine and fix the problem. Elk Grove then rented us a car at Enterprise and asked us to come back to the dealership the following morning, July 22nd. Luckily my wife and I had made arrangements with extended family so we had a place to stay that night. The next morning, Matt from Elk Grove called me and stated that the car was good to go and they were just finishing up getting it all cleaned up for us. We went to the dealership and Victor met us with bad news saying that the car was still intermittently not starting. He was not comfortable sending us in a car that might not start. He personally, Saturday is his day off, spent the rest of the day with us, looking for other cars in their inventory that might satisfy us so that we could still have a car to drive home. Understand that we arrived there on a one way airline ticket, and our down payment check had already been cashed by Yakima Dodge, and Yakima Dodge had already sent a check to Elk Grove to purchase the car that we were supposed to drive home. This was starting to get very messy. We settled on a similar Charger Scat Pack in Maximum Steel exterior paint. So now I am settling on a car that does not have my brakes and wheels, it isn’t even the color that I originally wanted. We were stuck by circumstances and I agreed to settle on something that I would never have purchased in the beginning. Due to the way Car #2 was purchased, we just purchased Car #3 as if we didn’t already own one. We would have to try to undo the purchase of car #2 when we returned home.

A new credit check was done, lowering my credit score a little again, all of the paperwork again, a $7,000 down payment, the whole process over again. The only differences in this transaction involve a slightly higher interest rate and Elk Grove wrote it up as an out of state transaction so we would pay our sales tax to Washington instead of California. The problem with this is that we were not allowed to take possession of the car in California. Instead, we had to take possession in Nevada, the nearest state border. By the time we found out that car #2 could not be fixed, car #3 was found and cleaned up for sale, and the paperwork was all done, it was 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday. The sale transaction, the actual handing over the car, had to be notarized in Nevada. The notary closed at five P.M. in Reno so we had 150 minutes to get 160 miles to complete the transaction. My wife and I followed our brand new car as we drove a dealership car behind it all the way to Reno over Donner Pass on Interstate 80. We made the notary with a few minutes to spare and completed the transaction. The Elk Grove driver handed us the keys to our new car and we handed him the keys to the dealership car. We were properly warned that we were not supposed to drive our new car into California until we had transferred the temporary registration to our home state of Washington. My wife and I jumped into our new Dodge Charger Scat Pack (Car#3), now with 170 miles on it. We stopped at a gas station and then headed out of Reno for home, a mere 630 miles away. About an hour later, we realized that we were too tired and could not make the drive all in one shot. We booked a motel 150 miles ahead and car #3 ran perfectly. We got to our motel and settled in for the night for some much needed rest. On Sunday morning, July 23rd, we headed out early for home. On our way home, we stopped at a gas station in Lakeview, Oregon to top off the tank and continued to head north. About a mile out of town the car lurched and shook and we began to smell a burning odor. We turned around and headed back to Lakeview to see if we could find someone to help us diagnose the problem. Car #3 would barely go forward. It was stuck in either third or fourth gear and was smoking. I could tell the transmission was slipping but we limped the mile back to town and turned it off. We called the FCA Roadside Assistance number that came with the car documentation and they promised a wrecker would be there within 30 minutes. Forest Bradley from Lakeview Auto Wrecking & Towing showed up on time and loaded car #3 onto the bed of his truck. We then rode along with Forest for the 80 mile ride to Klamath Falls, the nearest Dodge dealer.

A couple of hours, or a little more, later we arrived and we met Steve Justice, the General Manager of Lithia Auto Stores in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Steve listened to our story and then called his transmission technician in on a Sunday afternoon to see if they could get us back on the road. The technician arrived, examined the car and determined that the clutches in the transmission were totally destroyed and that the transmission would have to be repaired or replaced. Car #3 has exactly 415 miles on the odometer. I got to drive it for 220 of those miles. We were now stuck in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I technically owned two brand new Dodge Chargers, after having purchased three of them in two weeks. Car #1 was stolen by the Beaverton Dealership, Car #2 wouldn’t start and was still in Elk Grove, California, and Car #3 had a blown transmission and was in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Steve allowed us to use a dealership computer to search for a way home. We looked for flights, busses, trains, and rental cars. Nothing was leaving Klamath Falls on Sunday afternoon. My wife and I are now stuck 350 miles from home, a full day after we were supposed to be home, with no prospect of getting home until the following Monday or Tuesday. Steve Justice offered to have us driven to Medford, Oregon where we could catch the earliest flight back to Washington. His new employee Dakota, drove us the 80 miles one way to Medford where I was able to buy two one way tickets home and rent a room for the night. We arrived home today, just after noon. My wife and I have both missed the day of work today. I would like to point out a few facts so that anyone reading this understands this very clearly. Everyone we have dealt with at the dealership level in Yakima, Elk Grove, and Klamath Falls went well out of their way to try to help us. Each and every one of them should be commended for their dedication to the brand and customer service. I just can’t write enough thank you’s and praise for how all of them treated us and made our problem their problem. Three different people gave up their personal time and worked on their days off to help us. We are truly grateful. I cannot say anything nice about the Beaverton Dealership and Mr. McGrain. If I were the CEO of Dodge, I would kick them to the street. Had they not been so self-serving and dishonest, none of this would have happened. So now I am pleading with FCA Customer Assistance. I am disgusted. I have been damaged. I have spent dollars out of pocket that I cannot recover. I have lost wages, endured extra motel charges, and airline charges. My weekend was a disaster. I now own two brand new cars that don’t run and are in different states. I have nearly $14,000 out of my bank account and nothing to show for it except this story. If all of that isn’t enough, I now have a parking ticket from the Yakima airport because we returned later than we had planned and our prepaid parking had expired. The hits just keep on coming. How Do We Fix This? I need these car deals unwound immediately. I need to be reimbursed for expenses. I need this right away, not in a few months. If I buy a fourth Charger, I want a life time warranty on it. I want the car that I dreamed of and not have to settle for something just because it has four wheels and is available locally. I would still like to have a new Charger, but maybe now I should look at other brands. The only conclusion I can draw, after buying three and having two of them fail to perform, is that they have a 67% failure rate. They look fast sitting still, but two thirds of them do only that, sit still. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Nathan Bridges

Update July 31, 2017 This letter was originally addressed to Jenna at the FCA Assistance Center. Jenna was very nice and originally offered me a customer convenience package as compensation for the mix up on car #1 at Beaverton. But since Car #2 wouldn’t start and car #3 broke down, Jenna forwarded me to a case manager named Ryan. Case #32061297 was opened and Ryan worked on it for two days until July 28th. On July 27th, after speaking with the Elk Grove dealership, Ryan stated that since my name had been on car #2 and they had taken it back, they were not willing to take another “used” car back so they declined to unwind the deal on car #3. On Friday July 28th, Ryan called me and stated that he was moving my case to a different level in an effort to resolve the car #3 problems. He said that the next level of customer service would be in touch with me in the next few days. Meanwhile, Yakima Dodge has called me and asked me to meet with them to sign a document. I met with them on July 27th and signed a release of interest in car #2. Yakima Dodge refunded my initial down payment for car #1 and car #2 in full. The transaction went smoothly as I had expected it would. So, as of this date, I still own car #3, with a blown transmission, that is located at the Dodge dealership in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Today I received the payment coupon books for the loan on car #2. I called the bank and they were aware that the deal had been unwound and instructed me to “toss” the coupon books. I look forward to the telephone call from level three of customer service. August 1, 2017 This morning I was telephoned by Josiah from Dodge. I am assuming he works for some division of customer service. He stated that he would determine the final resolution to my case. He stated that Dodge would not take car #3 back and that they would fix it. He also stated that after the car was repaired, he would compensate me for being “out of the car”. I told him that I did not want the car because it had gotten very hot and who is to say what else is now wrong with it. He said I have a choice, fix it or don’t fix it. Either way, I would still own it. He said that he would have the car shipped to me since it was so far away. He also said that he would call me in a few days and that he may or may not have any further update on the status of the car but he would call me anyway. Josiah’s direct telephone line is xxxxxxxxxx. So now I am the proud owner of a 2017 Dodge Charger that is in the dealership in Klamath Falls, Oregon getting the transmission repaired or replaced. I will own a brand new car that could not go farther than 415 miles before needing a major repair. I think back on the day the transmission locked in gear and started spraying transmission fluid out onto the exhaust and I remember being worried that the entire car was going to catch on fire. In retrospect, I should have let my wife out along the highway and just driven the car until it burst into flames. It wouldn’t have taken but a mile or more for that to happen. I am going to call Josiah back this afternoon. I am going to elect NOT to repair the car. There is no need to repair it. I am not going to drive it. It is not safe. I have to pay for the car. That was the contract I entered into. Josiah made it perfectly clear that my credit rating would suffer if I did not continue to pay and that I really had no other option. Dodge can force me to fulfill my part of the contract. They did not fulfill their part of the contract and sell me a dependable and safe car. Dodge cannot force me to drive an unsafe car. It will just sit wherever they deliver it to. I have purchased three brand new Dodge Chargers since July 9th. I have not gotten one of them home to my home state of Washington or my driveway. I am going to finish paying for car #3 because I have no choice and hopefully Dodge will follow through and deliver it to me. I am going to publish this story everywhere that I can to protect whom-ever is considering buying a 2017 Dodge Charger. If you buy any other Dodge product and have a problem, you can see what you can look forward to concerning customer service should you have a problem. I was a loyal Dodge customer. I own four Dodge trucks and a 1971 Dodge Dart. I have lost faith in the brand and in the Company. I bought a brand new car and drove it for 220 miles before it experienced a major problem. Beware my readers, where ever you may be. I highly recommend not buying a 2017 Dodge Charger. I have purchased two brand new cars and both failed. The last one being totally unsafe and I would expect it to ignite when I least expect it but Dodge insists that I continue to pay for it and drive it.

Nate Bridges Sunnyside, WA