[Blueheed]

I've had my first Challenger R/T on order since September so I've been patiently waiting for a while now. I knew it was supposed to be in the shipping process so I decided to finally break down and track it. I figured out the VIN number (which I'd never asked for before now) and plugged it into one of the VIN tracking links I'd found here on the forum.

Everything looked good and it seemed to be only a few days out, but then I scrolled my eyes up and saw "Fenkel Repair Status - Damage Report" and I started to get a little bit jittery. They did what to my car? Is this normal? What the heck is going on? This was all going through my mind.

I ended up looking closer and found that Fenkel is a repair service that a lot of places use for fast repairs while a car is being shipped and processed, that made sense. and called the dealer to see if they could figure out what had happened. While I was calling I noticed that the time from damage report to completion was only 4 hours, so I'm assuming it wasn't anything too serious, butthe scary this is that the dealer hadn't even know there was damage and a repair. I'm still waiting on a callback to find out exactly what had happened, but it made me curious. How often does this happen? Is this just bad luck getting even with me or does it happen a lot?

I went to the dealer website and looked up a few of their cars and clicked on the sticker link to find their VINs, which is how I managed to find my own VIN number anyways, and popped those into the tracking link. Out of four of the VIN numbers I tried, including mine, two of them had a damage report status. Poor other guy, that car was in damage status for 2 days, must have been much more serious of a fix.

So what I have to ask here is, does this happen to a lot? I know a lot of members here track their ordered cars and would have noticed this as well. Have many of you seen this on your own orders? Just how common is this? Obvioulsly nobody wants their car to be messed up before they've seen it, but was the dealer going to even tell me? Would someone buy a car without knowing something had been damaged? I would hope so... but I'm not sure since I caught it before they did.

What are your thoughts on this?

Blueheed

 

[1sickR/T]

I have it on my car. I've done some investigation and found that most times it happens during the winter, and found that it is usually because the cold kills the batteries or breaks a hose (sometimes it is just scratches in the paint). More than likely it was a battery. Not sure about this, but a report might come with the car when it reaches the dealership. (maybe someone can chime on this subject)

 

[nolimits76]

Never heard of this, but makes sense. I'd just ask for a report to verify what happened to your car. If it was a dead battery or hose break that is one thing. If the car carrier was side swiped and paint/body repairs were needed I'd reject the car.