Yeah, something's fishy. Hopefully the drive cam will bear witness.

 

Well I checked the cam footage and there are no recordings until one day after I dropped off the car. I am certain they erased it. My cam records 4 hours of footage before looping. There is a total of 1 hr and 75 min of recordings and nothing prior to one day after taking the car in. As long as I've had this, there should be a full 4 hours of recordings just looping over old recordings. I don't buy this guys excuses. In the end what would they offer me anyway? A free detail? I wouldn't take my car back there anyway.

 

Likewise, I always ask them to take my cars on a test drive at least round the estate to report back anything they think may need looking at.
I have no extended experience of driving similar cars, so handling issues, strange knocking, weird gear changes, etc, are very hard for me to pick up on until they become obvious, but very easy for a technician who drives 4-5 similar cars a day.
It was due to a test drive that it was picked up the drive shaft spline on my F-Type needed a TSB fix for excessive backlash while it was still in warranty. I would have missed that on my own, and would have had to pay for the work myself.

As the service manager reported back to Jo - some technician routines do require the car to be driven either for certain durations or even at certain speeds. If filters are replaced I would want the car road tested too.

 

The boys were nice enough to leave all the footage beginning the day after I dropped off my car. So it did pick up the service, oil change etc, which all commenced a day AFTER the so called test drive to reset any monitors or indicators.

 

The most likely scenario...

 

So a possible explanation if you also needed the state inspection - if during the routine service they ran diagnostics and cleared any fault codes, this resets the O2 sensors I believe and they cannot complete the state inspection because it fails the OBD test for Ready on the O2 sensors until the car has been driven for a few miles. I got caught by this taking my car for state inspection after I had recently run my own diagnostics and routinely cleared a couple of "lost communication with module.." type codes as a result of battery drain. The testing station told me to take it away and drive it for a while so they could pass the Ready state.

As to the dash cam, I doubt they went to the trouble of erasing footage but may have disconnected the power to the dashcam. My dealer has done the same to mine when they were applying some software updates as they supposedly have been advised by Jaguar to shut down all other car items like lights, AC, radio etc when reflashing or updating modules. Again if your routine service threw up required software updates that might explain what was going on.

Not saying there wouldn't be anything underhand but sometimes there is no conspiracy theory...

 

Also...
I believe my original dealer (who I've abandoned) doesn't do state inspections - they take the car to somewhere that does.

 

Doesn’t matter who does the inspection if the computer says the O2 sensors are not in a ready state, they can’t issue a pass. Someone has to drive it around (not just leave it idling) until the Ready state shows up. So if the dealer didn’t do the inspection themselves, they most likely got told the problem and the dealer clearing fault codes as part of the service would definitely do it.

 

I really want to believe its innocent, I do! Routine driving for 25 minutes (two journeys 15min and 10min) and the 10min trip has the MPG down to 10. I've never had a journey down to 10 MPG! I'm not opposed to giving it a shot though. One other thing I found. If the cam detects a jolt, it will lock that video thinking it's a crash. After looking through the locked videos, one has the tech messing with the dash cam. He took it off the window mount and you can hear him or her pushing the buttons...the buttons beep when pushed. You can only see his fingers from holding the device. He has no business messing with my dash cam right?

 

I can't think of a reason to.

 

nb: I do realize that the shop had my 2016 for a total of about 3 1/2 months, the final time for a full month, and the engine problems that had it lemon out were tripping codes that were constantly being battled... they'd drive it to clear a code, and it would trigger another one. Or they thought they had it fixed, and had to drive it a certain distance to see if the code tripped again... and it did, every time. So my car was "special". lol

 

I can't speak to the dashcam being manipulated but I don't know if the state of Texas has something to say on recording audio without permission of the "subject" It's bizarre but I believe video is okay in these "consent" questions but audio isn't. I actually disabled audio on my dashcam. I have a tendency to use the British expletive bollocks from time to time....

Bear in mind that your vehicle is recording in a place of business, not out on the public highway. So there may be legal complications there which might permit the company and its representative (the tech) from taking appropriate action to shut it off if in doubt. Usually it's just easy enough to unplug the power.

Personally I've found it soul destroying in the past to try and believe the worst in people, now at least I try giving them the benefit of the doubt. Your car didn't appear to suffer a road trip, the 10mpg is speculation that lead boots were driving it but it is an AVERAGE - again with the AUTO trip computer that gets reset so a few minutes at idle would be enough to skew the average I would think.

The need to drive the car to bring the O2 sensors to READY state in order to pass state inspection are true, I have personal experience so again, hopefully an innocent explanation.

Oh and I'm just as picky about my car, my service guy smiles when he shows me the docket already completed with "no wash/detail" added as he knows me well.

I blame YouTube for making us all paranoid with click baity titles like "my mechanic blew up my engine after rotating the tires"

 

I could understand joyriding if OP was servicing Bugatti Chiron or Ferrari LaFerrari. Something that normal person would never get a chance to drive.

We are talking about F-type, while it isn't exactly Corolla, it is still day late and a dollar short of a supercar.

 

It doesn't matter if I drive a rusted out '92 Corolla. You don't help yourself to somebody's vehicle. That's bordering on theft.

 

I trust my dealer, but that's probably less common than it should be. When I went in for my first service, I discovered that my Service Adviser was someone I knew from years before through motorcycle racing. I really don't want to think about what things would be like if I didn't trust them. I had an independent Saab shop for a number of years, and when we closed, I had people tell me they were selling their cars because they didn't trust anyone else with them. Sadly, their distrust of other shops was based on harsh experience.

 

I had my car at the Cary, NC location and have a dash cam that faces both directions. It was in for an electrical issue that they final fixed. I have the kid on camera taking videos with his phone while gassing it pretty hard. That's after I told them I have different pulley on the car and I don't want them revving it high at all(had to take the tune off for them to work on it). I'll try to post the video later.

 

Seems it is not so uncommon.

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/canadian-t...230221636.html

 

Not so uncommon indeed.

Many years ago I had a brand new $18k BMW motor cycle with 600 miles on it I brought in for warranty service (weld broke on the center stand). On the day I was supposed to pick it up I went to the service department and nobody knew anything about my bike and couldn't tell me if it was ready. I got upset and asked to see the SM who told me my bike was damaged during service. I asked to see it and they reluctantly showed it to me. It looked like somebody dragged it around the floor of the shop several hundred times (bent foot peg, cylinder protector and handlebars, broken clutch lever, scraped/broken fairing, torn seat and bent rear subframe, etc.). They told me it fell off the elevated work stand onto the floor while it was being worked on. Anyway after legal threats eventually got the the bike fixed and warrantied to my complete satisfaction (both the the Dealer and BMW refused to give me a new bike). The paperwork they gave me showed they replaced over $7500 worth of parts.

Years later I ran into a guy who formerly worked at the dealership service department and he told me the real story. One of the mechanics took my bike home for the night and was joyriding on it, crashed and was very badly hurt.

BTW. Eventually put over 60K trouble free miles on the bike before I sold it.