bus71 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:53 pm
Late getting back to this. Thanks all for the info. Decided to live with it for now. Not up to modifying split bus bushings at the moment. I'm afraid others might leave me no better than where I'm at. Wish someone could afford to commit to make us good parts. I would pay more but recent experience with so called o.e.m quality has left me jaded.
Alas, the causes for today's jadedness can open a whole big can of worms, but I think we are seeing fresh and dire evidence of our need to step up and participate in many aspects of modern life.
A change in attitude has occurred. The corporate milieu has become ever more out of touch with their core competence and has replaced interaction with creepy automated "customer service" messages that allow them to coast into cynical mediocrity "wait times are unexpectedly long, please hold, your call is (cough-cough) very important to us."
It is an attitude seen at Wells Fargo, in Washington DC, at Motel6, and in several manufacturing enterprises like Toyota (and Volkswagen!) where the customer has become the annoyance if not the enemy. We used to battle our laziness when we got up and went to work. The entire social contract demanded it. If you were off your competence or friendly attitude towards customers game, your boss (who was an actual part of the business and may have actually built it him or herself) would urge you to get back in the saddle with friendly threats of getting your sorry ass fired, and what would your mother say?
Now, at Wells Fargo, the management promotes having their agents lie to their customers, or doing underhanded little tricks like signing you up with accounts without your consent or knowledge, forcing you into insurance contracts that you are not made aware of, and only because they got caught did they spew customer-speak about "regaining our customers' trust", and perhaps the CEO steps down with a golden parachute that clearly shows that crime pays. In Washington, we now have so many policies that fly in the face of the Will of the People, that I have to ask who are our representatives actually answering to?
Our parts suppliers are top-heavy with the "investor owner" who knows nothing about the actual parts, the history of the cars they go into, and certainly not the trials and tribulations of the customers who haplessly try to get these things to fit. These people are surrounded by all the evidence that they need that customers and citizens alike are merely impediments to profits. This is the new normal, and every day that they get away with it, they are emboldened to keep sticking it to the consumer.
They will not change unless we demand it. But we are too polite, too accommodating, too naive, too worn down to get on the phone and speak with our servicers or sellers, their suppliers or manufacturers. And like modern phone service companies like Verizon, you will never never ever speak with anyone in the organization who has actual discretion over how things are done.
So, wait until your tie rods are bobbing up and down dizzily, and your steering is a horror of vague wandering, then stick in a FEBI kit, and even if it is too sloppy, at least you will discern an improvement.
Colin