TL;DR The General Manager, Mike X., has zero integrity as well as an anger management problem and will take advantage of you with a clean conscience. After waiting more than 11 months to get my car back mostly due to their incompetence, I highly recommend trying to avoid this business at all costs.
Geico convinced me to have my 2022 Hyundai Tucson towed to Global Collision after an accident on 12/21/21. Having been in multiple car accidents previously (I delivered pizza for 9 years) and working in the automotive industry for the last 10 years, I immediately assumed Geico would total the vehicle as there was massive damage to the front driver’s side resulting in the side-curtain airbag going off. I had leased it less than 4 months prior to the accident. Global estimated the damages around $18k and the car retailed at about $38k at the time. I told the adjuster that there is no way that estimate is correct since there was severe frame damage and the hood hadn’t even been opened up yet to see what was wrong there. The adjuster dismissed my opinion at the time and the repairs ended up totalling about $35,600.
Knowing there have been logistical challenges in the industry, I expected it to take between 2-3 months for my car to be fixed. Having not received any sort of update on things near the end of month 2, I called to check in on the progress. I was told by the receptionist that she needs to check in with the team and that she would call me back to provide an update. I’m a very patient (and busy) person and gave her 2 weeks before I called back after not hearing from her. I was told that she thinks it will be ready within the next few weeks but that she will call me back with more specific information after checking the notes on the car. This happened a few times over the course of a couple more months before I began to get frustrated. Every time I called she would repeat the same notes as the time before, promise to call me back with more specific/current information, and then never call me back. I tried asking her to send me the parts order details a few times to see when they were actually ordering the parts, but every time I did she would promise to send this to me via email but never did.
By month 4 of hearing the same thing every time I called, I became convinced that the team at Global kept forgetting to order the parts. I asked to speak to a manager and as I was describing how frustrating this whole thing had been to Mike X., he chastised me like a child for using a single curse word in my description even though I was trying to prevent myself from hysterically crying while explaining how horrible the situation has been for me. While I can’t remember what it was verbatim, it was something like, ‘I feel like I’m being fed a bunch of bullsh@t’ or something similar that was not in any way an actual insult to any other human being). I advised him that I don’t believe his team was ordering the parts in a timely fashion which was likely increasing the delays and wanted the order information details emailed to me as soon as they could so that I could see for myself. I think it might have been Johnson that called back a little bit later that day and told me that they would waive my deductible and provide me a rental vehicle given the extreme inconvenience the whole situation was. Johnson assured me that moving forward, someone would be calling me weekly on Fridays to update me on the progress. He also told me that the car would be ready in the next few weeks at which time I would return the rental.
They never emailed me the order details, but I let that go since they provided me with a rental car and my actual issue was the lack of a vehicle and trying to figure out logistics between my husband and toddler.
And of course, the ‘weekly progress call’ happened a grand total of 1 time before whoever was supposed to be calling me quit.
Much to my surprise in month 6, Global advised that they can no longer provide the rental vehicle and that I needed to return it. Since they were still going to waive the deductible, I decided that there wasn’t going to be much point in putting up a fight. They still assured me that the car would be ready within the next few weeks though of course…
When I finally was able to pick up my car in month 11, I was absolutely shocked when the receptionist told me that they were charging me the deductible. I asked to speak to the manager and eventually Mike X. came up front with audible, exacerbating sighs while tossing papers onto a desk on his way to the window to talk to me. He aggressively popped off that they cannot waive the deductible because they already spent $3k on the rental (which was a gross exaggeration since they were paying a massively discounted rate for it). Flabbergasted, I couldn’t even put into words the fact that I had paid over $4,500 over the last 11 months for a leased vehicle I didn’t even have because of his poor managerial skills. I explained to him that the rental wasn’t even provided for the time that it took for my car to get fixed and he insisted that they never said they’d waive the deductible, rather that they would ‘try to’ and that they couldn’t. I told him that that was a lie and ended up going back and forth a little bit more about it before handing over my credit card just so I could move on with my life after this ordeal.
Thinking that would be the last I’d ever have to deal with them, I was thrilled to get back into my car. When I started it, the gas tank range was down to 2 miles (it was almost full when I got into the accident) and before I could even finish telling my husband that I needed to get to a gas station quickly, it dropped to 1 mile. In a frantic rush to avoid having to ask Global for help that I knew they wouldn’t provide, I hopped in and drove to the closest gas station. I left to head back to my office right away since I was already gone longer than anticipated.
When I arrived at my office I finally had a chance to actually look at the car.
It wasn’t even put back together all the way when they gave it back to me! The trim running along the bottoms of the doors was completely missing on both sides so the frame was completely exposed, the seat belt assembly was still crushed and immobile, there were smears of some sort of glue like substance across the dash, the wheel, and the stereo, there were deep scratches in the metal along the door frame, and the weather strip was poorly installed and likely to leak.
Of course I tried everything I could to avoid having to go back to Global, but the Geico adjuster told me that since they already paid for those parts, Global had to fix it. Global tried to put the blame on a third party that worked on the car which lined up pretty well with their general lack of accountability but agreed to finish the repairs.
After pointing out the remaining problems in person to the receptionist, I picked up my car for the second time and a large grease smudge I pointed out to her in the interior was still there. I asked that it be cleaned before I left because I wasn’t sure of the right kind of cleaner to use on the material. Javier was the gentleman that came out to help with this and he was just a breath of fresh air. Shout out to Javier as he was extremely pleasant and deserves to work somewhere with competent management.
As it stands, there is still a nickel-sized scratch on the steering wheel column as well as 3, 1 cm rips on my shifter handle. I am really hoping they are too small to get charged for when I return the lease since Global refuses to take any responsibility for it.
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