digitalwiz

In my experience, a certified car is just a used car sold with a piece of paper saying it passed some internal review. CPO cars can have accidents, body and paint work, and other issues. I had a CPO car sold to me with a spare tire over the age limit to be sold in California. Sure they say they do a 115 point inspection. Technically, when you look in the direction of a car you could say you inspected it....

You can always take the car to an indy for a real inspection with an inspector with your interests in mind.

Tim_944

Well on my CPO checklist which they gave me it says that interior door trim passed the inspection. to me that is proof that they either lied or didn't inspect the car at all and just ticked off the boxes to sell it as a CPO car.

So far not pleased with the service that I am getting. The whole point of paying more for a CPO car was to have issues like this covered. Porsche Centre Vancouver seems to have really bad service after they sell you a car.

RPA911

I can't believe a dealer said they could fix that. You paid for CPO for a reason, piece of mind. Now they need to honor their warranty. As other have said PCNA sounds like your best option if you don't get resolution very soon. Do you have other dealerships relatively close to you that you can use? Sounds like your current dealership isn't trustworthy.

NF4710

Best solution is to take out the door panels entirely and use fabric pulls. If Porsche had done it then it would have cost you an extra $50k lol. Sad for those of us out of warranty. Just goes to show that the brand isn’t what it used to be.

Cheers,
NF

visitador

Here we go again, the never ending saga. Officially, CPO does not cover cosmetic defects and door panel warping is considered cosmetic. However, like anything human, Porsche will cover it as a goodwill if your service advisor pushes for it. That is why you see a lot of owners claiming their door panels were replaced under CPO.

As a last resort check http://www.pedrosgarage.com/Site_2/TechnoPanel.html

Don't try finding other permanent fixes because there is an airbag and you want the airbag to work in case of an accident

Tim_944

Interesting. So should I accept their offer to have it "fixed" by this "leather specialist." I will contact Porsche North America and I guess Porsche Club of America to see what they say.

I have another dealer within 35 Km of my home which I could go to and see what they say.

visitador

At this rate, your dealer's service advisor is not advocating for you. I would call Porsche directly and explain the situation; that the dealer sold you a car knowing it has an expensive defect. This is something that any technician checking the car for CPO certification would have noticed. As a greenhorn customer, you may not have. But the dealer knows since it is such a common occurrence

Tim_944

Ok, thank you. That was my plan. I am pretty disappointed. I thought that I would be getting a better quality car by buying a low mile CPO from a Porsche dealer and having the peace of mind of the warranty and a certified technician checking the car over to give it the "CPO certification." It appears now that at least with this dealership, if the car runs and has no warning lights on the dash then it is good enough to sell as a CPO car. After I get my car back I am also planning on getting the body panels checked for signs of accident repair (hopefully no repairs) as I noticed that the front bumper has been repainted (not the best job in some spots) and the Carfax is clean and they told me that the car has no prior accidents (CPO checklist also discloses that they checked for prior accidents and there were no signs of prior accidents or repairs). I obviously don't trust the CPO checklist anymore.

Anyways, will try to deal with the door panel issue first. I asked them to email me the service manager's email today so that I can email them. They took my email and never responded to me.

My previous daily driver was a Subaru Sti, and the motor blew under warranty and they were refusing to fix it because they claimed that my receipts for oil changes were not proper (my shop did hand written receipts) and the motor had loss of compression due to bad valves (nothing to do with oil). The sti engines have known issues which have nothing to do with maintenance. They finally fixed my engine after I told them that I was a lawyer and was going to commence litigation. I expected Porsche to have better service than Subaru.

drcollie

A little advice here, don't use email. Go in person, on a Monday preferably (definitely not weekends) and go straight to the General Manager, get his name from the Receptionist before you go, they are almost always in on Mondays. Explain to him your situation, and how you specifically chose this dealership to purchase from due to their excellent reputation. Put the ball in his court, face to face. Email and phone calls are poor methods of communication when you have an "iffy" issue that needs to be taken care of. It's much more difficult for them to say "no" to you when you are standing in their office.

f you absolutely run out of options at the dealer, ask them for the name and contact phone of the Porsche Regional Rep for their dealership. He's the person you want, not the customer service person answering the phone at the 1-800 number. Once you get the Regional Porsche Rep, ask to meet at the dealership in person with them to review the panels on the vehicle and go over the CPO documentation and make that appointment. They REALLY hate that and will do everything they can to avoid having that appointment. I've been down this road before, it usually works.

And one other tip, stay focused on the door panels only, don't drift off to bumper resprays and the like.

Restore

Interestingly when I had my 991 in for a warranty claim this year (it is a CPO but still within the regular warranty period) they told me that Porsche looks at the original in-service 3 or 4 year warranty (I forget which it is) differently from the extended CPO (following 3 year) period. While the later CPO period still covers a lot, Porsche is less apt to be keen on dealing with cosmetics or non-essential things away from the normal functioning of the car then. I don't know if they floated me that line and I never heard that before but maybe it applies here given this is a 2013 and at least 7 years from in-service now. Otherwise I (and probably others) have shown how the CPO check-list is not worth the paper it is printed on as many cosmetic things are either not checked, overlooked or selectively ignored....The only good thing about CPO is that at least there's a good chance something will get fixed gratis - after you spend the time and effort to have it done.

jaysc

I just received the same explanation along with a $500 bill for the work they did to fix it "as best as possible" without doing the whole factory replacement. Realistically, though, if whatever they did (which they swear was not a shoddy job as the tech said they'd only do it if they felt they could do it right) is less apt to failure than the factory replacement then I'm ok with it.

Tim_944

I'm going to the dealer tomorrow morning. I feel like my situation is a bit different as this failure happened before I purchased it and they did not disclose it to me. I found out shortly after buying the car. I purchased the car for $85,000.00 plus taxes (around $100,000.00) thinking I am buying a car from a Porsche dealer and they will sell me a car in good condition. The warped door panels make the car look like a beater. Again, my 78 Porsche 928 door panels are not warping and don't look like that.

It's not like I'm complaining about some paint chips or normal wear and tear on a used car. They also showed me the CPO checklist and said there were no issues with the car (interior trim was checked off as having no issues).

I think it is shady practice by the dealer to not inform me that the door panels are warped. If I had known I would not have purchased this car unless they agreed to replace it at their cost.

Tim_944

I talked to the manager of Porsche Centre Vancouver and they would not give me the contact info of the regional manager as they claimed that they are not allowed to give that info to me and just gave me the 1800 number for Porsche customer service. I showed them my CPO checklist where it says that they checked the door trim and checked off that it was all good. I told them that it is pretty shady for a Porsche dealer not to disclose that the door panels are warped before selling me the car and telling me that they won't replace it. They told me they can fix it. They said that the door panel has nothing to do with air bags as the air bags are on the seat. I told them that I am concerned that if the guy who did the CPO check ticked off that my door panels are fine, that he may have not checked other things on the car. The refused to accept that it was their fault and kept on saying that, oh maybe the guy who checked the car missed that the door panels are warped. The issue to me is not whether or not the door panel is covered by CPO. The issue is they gave me a list of items they checked which indicated that the interior trim had no issue but they were not honest and I found out that the doors are warped after purchase and I want new panels installed as I don't trust their repair job.

anyways asked them to return my car to me and I will contact another dealer and try to see if I can contact a Porsche representative or regional manager. Last resort will be starting legal action against the dealer. The manager told me that I if I complain to the regional manager the regional manager might tell them to buy my car back because my car is a great deal etc. They were trying to scare me, by telling me that if I complain the might just take back my car by buying it back and selling it to someone else.

koala

Definitely try a different dealer. There are airbags in the doors.

Also- how on earth would they force you to sell the car back to them?

Beginning to think every single Porsche dealer in Canada is just a total joke.

Tim_944

They are a joke. They just kept on telling me they have the best service lol. I'm pissed bc they won't admit that they failed to disclose the warped door panels to me and now claim that oh maybe our technician missed it. After I pick up my car I'm never going back to them. They have my car sitting in the shop for 2 weeks now. I am getting snow tires mounted on a new set of wheels.

I will try a different dealer. Again to be clear, if my door panels failed after I bought the car and it wasn't covered I would not be as pissed. However, the door panels were already warped when they sold it to me,

My CPO papers say that my Porsche has been inspected by a factory trained technician who conducted a "thorough mechanical and cosmetic inspection" also ticked off that door trim has passed inspection.

Also, from the Porsche website re CPO vehicles:

"Before a vehicle receives the Porsche Approved designation, it must undergo rigorous inspection to ensure it delivers the same impeccable quality as when it first rolled off the production line. And once our Porsche Certified Technicians have given a model the green light, we back it up with 2 years of unlimited mileage. Because no matter how far you take your Porsche, your only concern behind the wheel should be deciding where in the world you want to go next."