Problems With Chevrolet When Life Hands You Lemons

Back in December my husband and I decided we had enough of our not-so practical mustang and opted for a more family friendly vehicle. We needed something where if we went to the city and bought a big piece of furniture we would be able to bring it home ourselves. A must have feature for me was a tunnel cover and after some searching and a lot of research we bought a 2011 Chevy Avalanche.

I love loved my truck. It had a beautiful interior, rode smooth and had a lot of room for us and had the space for when a little one comes a lone. My favorite feature was how everything stays covered and you can extend the box to you back seat. I was all for the avalanches (and I was even switching my Ford loving ways to Chevy) and then Friday happened:

I went up to Edmonton to visit my dad, brother and some family friends since the boys had hockey try outs for a junior hockey team up north. We met them at West Edmonton Mall and had no troubles with out truck to that point. For dinner, we all decided to go to the Sawmill and as soon as my husband and I got in the truck and turned on 90th avenue we noticed something was wrong. Our truck was not shifting gears. With the high revs we couldn’t go past 50 km/hr on 170th. As soon as we turned into the restaurant, Eric called OnStar. Pfff…no help there.

OnStar said that they couldn’t see that anything was wrong on there end and it will probably be a good idea to bring it to the nearest dealership. At that point, Eric put the truck in reverse but to no avail. He told the OnStar agent that he couldn’t even do reverse and they still couldn’t find anything wrong! Luckily, he was parked on a hill so he was able to roll back and head to the “nearest” Chevy dealership.

I stayed with my dad and had dinner. Eric called a couple minutes later saying that Chevy would not give us a courtesy vehicle (because there was not customer service) and he needed a ride. At this point I was fuming. So I drove to the nearest Chevy dealership (The Chevy Farm) and when I walked in I saw there was a CSR. Confused, I talked to her and found out that I went to the wrong dealership. OnStar didn’t even direct him to the nearest one.

When I finally found the dealership OnStar directed him to (Western Pontiac, which isn’t even a Chevrolet dealership) I saw they were closed. Since Nancy at The Chevy Farm was incredibly helpful I opted to drive the truck down the busy road and take it there. So there we were going 20 km/hr (by this time the check engine light finally came on and still now help with OnStar) and finally got it to the right dealership.

I want to take a moment and say if you live in the Edmonton area, or even just Alberta and you are looking to deal with Chevy. I recommend The Chevy Farm. The customer service I received from Nancy D and all the staff there was amazing. They realized we lived 1.5 hours away and were stuck. They gave us a vehicle for the night and rented us a car from Budget so we could get back home the next day. (Since there were no mechanics on site for Saturday.) Not only was Nancy compassionate, she was quick and really fought for the customer. Customer service is not an easy job to be in sometimes and she deserves all the recognition she can get. They also had some really competitive prices!

I also want to say that I do not recommend OnStar! Yes, they have some fun features (such as turn by turn navigation and directions) but when I actually needed them they were not there. They wouldn’t even make phone calls on behalf of us to find a dealership that was actually open. (Which I later found out was not right and I must have been dealing with a lazy agent.) I am not happy with OnStar at all.

I am also not happy that the Chevy help line closes at 9pm eastern time! We had questions about what we could be reimbursed for with the roadside assistance and no one was able to answer our questions. You would think a big company the Chevy would have agents 24 hours. Needless to say, I will never buy a Chev again.