Originally Posted by guitarzan327

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on here if you live in the Johnson City area of Northeast Tennessee. I bought a '04 Crossfire from Carl Gregory last year, and have had nothing but headaches with anything related to this 'stealership'. When I test drove the car, the ball joints were popping terribly, so when I negotiated on the price and insisted that those must be change before I would sign agree to purchase. They agreed to change them and told me I could pick up my car the next afternoon, as this would be completed. When I went to pick up the car, they tried telling me that my financing had not gotten approved, but that they could sell me a new car, as that was approved. After a very heated discussion with a lot of choice adjectives, they finally 'magically' got it approved, but they car had not been repaired because of this ordeal. I was told to pick it up the next day.

Well, nearly 2 weeks went by and I still did not have my car. So another heated discussion insued (with many more choice adjectives) and 30 minutes later, my car was sitting in front of the dealership with the ball joints replaced. They had it fixed the entire time, but for some reason, would not let me take the car. I finally left with it shortly after that.

Upon the next few days of driving it, I noticed that there was a terrible vibration in the steering wheel, so I called them up and they said, "it must just be a bent rim but we you have taken ownership of the car, so we will not fix it."

I wasn't buying that it was a bent wheel at first, so I changed almost every part in the front suspension trying to figure out what was causing this, but never got rid of it until about a month ago.

I took the car to get an alignment, and they had not corrected it after changing the ball joints. (I had not done this because I assumed that they had enough since to do so.) The shop that I had it done at told me that it was one of the worst aligned cars that they had ever worked on. (It was as much as 8 degrees negitive on one wheel) I was hoping that this would correct the steering when I was told this, but it actually made it worst. So I jacked up the car and starting checking to make sure everything was tight. That's when I noticed that front wheels would not move but about 1/2 turn and it appeared that the brake rotors were hitting the pads and causing this. So I took them off to reveal what had been causing the problem the entire time. Carl Gregory's gang of crack shot mechanics had not put any grease between the wheel bearings and the axle. (This too was never check because I once again assumed that they had that much sense.) There was so little grease on there that you could wrap your hand around the axle and nothing would come off on it. Greased up the bearings and the car now drives like a dream. I will however be replacing them soon, because I'm sure that they are burned up now.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up about their service so it doesn't happen to another fellow forum member.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I had been getting the oil changed there a few times because they gave me a few free oil changes to try and get me to calm down the second time I went back. (They would then b*tch everytime I took the car for an oil change and say that it wasn't covered under that policy, even though they knew what type of car I had bought from them.) Anyway, I recently changed the oil myself to find out that during the 3 oil changes that I had performed there, they had not changed the oil filter at any of them. It still had a Mercedes filter on the car (as well as a reciept in the manual for an oil change performed just before I bought the car at a local Mercedes dealership.) I inquired with CG on whether they kept OEM Mercedes oil filters in stock, and was advised they do not carry them and cannot get them.

Sounds like a great way to run a business to me.