Dont trust the dealership

steveg241 said:

Legally no one can force you to use the dealer to keep your warranty. If you document the oil purchased and that is Dexos2 or equivalent, meaning ACEA C3 compliant, and that you document you had it done at the specified interval by yourself or some other shop, your warranty should be intact.


Volkswagen is a different company, but when the Jetta I have was new, I did none of the services at the dealer. When something went wrong at 40,000 miles (at the time is was a 4 year/50,000 miles warranty) and the car was running rough, they asked to see maintenance records. I kept every receipt and showed it to them for oil changes every 5,000 miles using Castrol synthetic oil that met the VW oil specs and they accepted it. This included several oil changes that I did myself. I just kept the Autozone receipt for the oil and filter and took a picture of the dash showing the receipt and mileage.

Yes, I'm a bit particular about this stuff, but if you keep good records there shouldn't be an issue.

Click to expand...

There's times where I may be living out of hotels for 6 months or more so stuff gets lost. Checking in and out of places weekly sometimes to include the maids taking into their best judgement on what looks like a receipt that needs to be saved(iPod worst buy receipt vs wal mart one with oil plus paper plates, underwear, cups, gum and a 6 pack) . Best bet is your route and scanning stuff to photobucket into a folder that is not private so you can open it w/o compromising your password via saved cookies from any comp. My last few cars were used but brand new ones goes to dealer for a few years till I feel comfortable about honoring the warranty if need be. I had a brand new car die 1st 3 months of factory fill from oil starvation due to a factory defect and used one go from a factory defect turbo 2 years into ownership. I don't feel like I lost a percentage of manhood from going this route or that special bond from the car you would acquire teaching your son how to ride a bike and letting go of the handle bars. At the end of the day it comes down to convenience vs trust of the facility servicing your vehicle.

diesel said:

I have found in my experience that businesses do take BBB complaints seriously

Click to expand...

Even more so, GM Corporate and Chevrolet Management take customer complaints seriously; particularly if there is a complaint to the BBB. A complaint that is not successfully resolved, particularly on a new vehicle under warranty, means the person who complains will tell 10 - 29 of his friends and acquaintances of his displeasure with the dealership, with Chevrolet, and with GM as a Corporation, and suggest they take their business elsewhere. The "average Joe" does not know, nor does he care, that a given Chevrolet dealership is privately owned and operated. On the other hand, a dealership that meets the customer's needs in a timely and cost efficient manner gets accolades from the customer and recommendations to his/her friends and acquaintances. In such a situation, the dealershp "wins", Chevrolet "wins", and GM "wins". The discerning reader will note that GM is providing this forum with a Customer Service Representative. Part of this is to be helpful, but for the most part it is to find out what we, the customers of this new model, are telling each other about our experiences.

This is for good reason. Locally, two television stations have "investigative reporters" that take complaints and confront the business on camera. A refusal to be interviewed or an unsatisfactory response from a business is a "kiss of death" in the Salt Lake Valley (3 counties). The TV shows air as part of the news broadcast and are widely watched. Other communities have similar TV shows and GM / Chevrolet guard their reputation jealously in an era of fierce competition with both domestic and foreign competition.

The moral of the story is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you have an issue with your new Cruze CTD, complain loudly and often to the dealer, Chevrolet Management, GM Management, the BBB, and your local TV station. If you live in a State with a "Lemon Law", start the paperwork that will compel the return of the car as a Lemon. That will definitely get the dealer's attention.

The wrong oil won't do too much damage to the engine if it is the correct viscosity in the short term. You get into trouble with high SAPs oils in the new diesels because if there are high amounts of Sulfur, Ash or Phosphorus you risk damage to the emissions systems when some of the oil is inevitably burned off.

The risk due to composition of the oil as diesel pointed out comes in the form of the inability of non-diesel formulated oil to suspend unburned diesel fuel and ash in the crankcase. Volkswagen did studies to determine how much dilution occurs over 10,000 miles and determined with the correct oil 50% dilution is tolerable. With D2 you will get nowhere near 50%. With B5 you will get an average dilution of 45% over the course of 10,000 miles. With a 7,500 mile interval Chevy has specified things will be fine if people go by mileage and not by the oil life indicator.

So what is comes down to is the most likely long term issues will be clogged DPFs that stem from higher ash levels in the oil which will get caught in the DPF. Since only soot will burn off, the ash will remain eventually requiring the DPF to be cleaned or replaced. This will surely be out of the bumper to bumper warranty and may not even be covered under the power train warranty.