Back in the 90's I worked for a Information Security company that had a number of contracts with Chrysler and ultimately DaimlerChrysler; I actually re-located to the Detroit Michigan area to build out a team to support these contracts.
Overall my time working with DaimlerChrysler was a good one, there was a lot of excitement about what the merger was going to bring, I also remember growing up and hearing my father tell me stories of how Lee Iacocaa was saving Chrysler from it self in the 80's.
To a great extent its the culmination of these events that lead to me considering Chrysler when my wife's Audi A6 AWD wagon started having more problems than it was worth, but the cincher for me was the discount I get as a Microsoft employee with Chrysler, at the time it was 0% APR, 1% below invoice, and several thousand cash back.
The product offering that Chrysler had at the time that met most of our criteria was the Chrysler Pacifica, a 4x4 cross-over vehicle that supposedly had the strongest Mercedes influence of all of the cars since the merger, best of all was before my discount it was still over $10,000 cheaper than the next vehicle in its class that met our criteria.
I ultimately bit the bullet, Mothers Day 2005 I purchased Heather a Chrysler Pacifica (these have since been discontinued), it was in the shop just less than a month after that, just a few weeks after that again it was in the shop, unfortunately this trend continued, we had all kinds of problems, the car would just stop conveniently in the middle of intersections, there were transmission issues, suspension issues, engine issues; this car was a lemon.
We tried for about a year and a half, FAR too long to get these issues resolved, frankly I did not want to believe I had a lemon, so when the dealership told me they fixed a issue I left optimistically believing them, unfortunately with rare exceptions they were wrong.
We ultimately reached a point where the dealer refused to try to service the vehicle issues they had previously looked at, despite the problems still existing, even though the car was under warranty; we asked to have them re-purchase the car and give us another one and they refused.
At this point we decided to file a Lemon Law claim with the state, everything we read on line made it sound like this would go quick, we would know one way or another in just a few weeks, and if they decided in our favor we would have a new car just a few weeks after that.
After about 3 months of waiting we heard from Chrysler, apparently the state was about to make a decision and Chrysler decided to offer to replace the vehicle on their own accord instead of having the state decide for them; I agreed.
I was told at this point to go pick out the car we wanted, that the process would just take a few more weeks but the car we wanted would be held, well we went right down to the local dealer and picked out a new car, it was the Diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee Overlander, it essentially has the same engine and transmission Mercedes ML320 SUV.
Well a few weeks passed, and the Chrysler contact we were working with was not returning our calls and the Dealership we had selected sold the car we had picked out, I tried working with the dealer to source another car but the guys were incompetent I was able to find results in their system they could not; in the end the dealership told me they would have to order a car for me because they were not willing to do a inventory transfer from another dealer.
At this point I finally heard back from the Chrysler representative, he was apologetic, he said next time the paperwork would not take so long so I went and found another car, this time at another dealership, I gave the Chrysler representative the details for the car and the paperwork process began again, two weeks in the dealership sold that car too.
At this point there are no more Diesel Jeep Grand Cherokees with the trim package we had wanted in the state they wont transfer from a out of state dealer so we had to resign ourselves to placing a order for a car, we were warned this could take a long time, it did.
We have now taken possession of the car, from the time we filed the Lemon Law claim it was over a year before we had the car, it took 8 months once Chrysler engaged before they managed to get us a replacement.
I have signed a NDA and can not talk about the exact details of the transaction, but the way they do this is they calculate the transaction based on the MSRP of the original vehicle and the MSRP of the new one, calculating a depreciation on the original vehicle by giving some usage credit in miles then calculating a per mile charge against the total number of miles driven.
What I can say is that during my time working on this issue with Chrysler I have come to accept Chrysler is inept, absolutely incompetent, time after time they made commitments to me and never followed through or worse backed out entirely.
Often times I hear about how due to labor costs the American automotive industry can't compete in this global market, and while I agree this is a problem that is just the surface of a much larger problem.
The quality of these vehicles are not competitive with their foreign counterparts, the customer service experience during both the sales and service cycle is not even comparable, and worse the processes designed the "retain" customers like the replacement process I just went through are so inefficient and broken that it accomplishes the exact opposite.
It's in my nature to look for the root of problems, when I look at my experiences with Chrysler I believe the problem can be summed up into a single word, "accountability". All of the problems I experienced, really do boil down to just that and unfortunately that's a culture problem, which we all know are some of the hardest problems to solve in a business.
All I can say is that as an American this all makes me very sad.