Warranty Voided by using aftermarket speakers!

[bdragger]

I am the new owner of a (used) '03 vibe.I just got back from the nearest pontiac dealer. Long story short, my stereo's amp is blown, but since I've replaced the rear speakers, my warranty is void. According to the service advisor, replacing the factory amp costs over $500.The ironic part is, I had the problem before replacing the speakers - I thought a nice pair of aftermarket speakers would do the trick. Does this make sense? Do I have any options?

[AKLGT]

well, to be quite honest, the factory amp is crap. maybe use this as a good time to replace that too! or go to the for sale forums and i think TRD4reel has one for cheap. check on ebay too. but not worth spending any money on it if you ask me. get a nice amp.

[joatmon]

In http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=11676 you said "I looked inside the speaker grill. Looks like the previous owner put some aftermarket 5" woofers in the back doors with some kind of cutoff to only lett bass frequencies pass through. (Sounds terrible, right?)"so it is possible that whatever the previous owner did was responsible for messing up the amp. I can't see paying $500 for the OEM M&T amp, $500 would buy you a pretty nice setup. If you just want to replace the amp and keep it stock, then occaisionally someone has one for sale here,(like http://forums.genvibe.com/zerothread?id=10966) and they show everynow and then on ebay.Maybe you can ask people here to not bid on the one on ebay now so you can get ithttp://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...=WDVWno bids, $15 starting bid, Ends Aug-08-04 16:08:19 PDT

[bdragger]

Thanks for the help guys. This has been my first experience with a car nice enough to have a warranty, let alone a factory-installed (albeit broken) amplifier. Hopefully, with the assistance of GM customer service and another dealer's opinion I can have a fully operational stereo in my vibe. As for the amp on e-bay, crappy as it may be, I might snap it up just to avoid the hassle of buying and installing an aftermarket amp. I'll keep you posted.

[ToolGuy]

Unfortunately the dlr has one up on this situation, they are in the right and doing as they are instructed. Another dlr may bend the rule but I doubt it since they have no idea what else had been changed with the stereo. People need to be very careful when modding their vehicles for things like this. My advice would be put the stockers back in if you have them, get a pair if you do not and take it to another dlr. If someone did a hack job on the wires, you are screwed again.

[Psychobroker]

Quote, originally posted by bdragger »Thanks for the help guys. This has been my first experience with a car nice enough to have a warranty, let alone a factory-installed (albeit broken) amplifier. Hopefully, with the assistance of GM customer service and another dealer's opinion I can have a fully operational stereo in my vibe. As for the amp on e-bay, crappy as it may be, I might snap it up just to avoid the hassle of buying and installing an aftermarket amp. I'll keep you posted. You still think you should plead the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

[bdragger]

I checked out the ftc website you posted. Then I checked with my owner's manual. Sure enough, GM left themselves a written "out" for the 3 year/ 36k warranty. To paraphrase, any modifications not installed by a GM dealer can void the warranty. The odd thing is that I only took the factory speakers out of the rear doors after talking to a pontiac service "advisor". He told me that if I replaced the factory speakers, the problem may go away. If not, "come on in and we'll check it out,". Well, with the exception of being a potential warranty issue , his advice was solid...Now that I've been denied warranty coverage, he says I can re-install the original (toyota) speakers and try to "redeem" myself. OF course, I drilled out the rivets and snipped off the factory speaker wiring harness in the process, so my modification would still be obvious to anyone upon opening the door panel.That said, my car has an Injen CAI and Borla exhaust. Since those mods are on both sides of my engine, is anything on my car covered by a warranty?

[ToolGuy]

Usually Cold Air Intakes, filters and exahust do not void warranties, you should be fine there 99%.

[Mavrik]

Quote, originally posted by MiVibe-ToolGuy »Usually Cold Air Intakes, filters and exahust do not void warranties, you should be fine there 99%. unless you blew the engine from materials sucked through the intake into the cylinders.. blah blah sorta thing.But for the speakers (back on topic ) how would a different speaker blow an amp? I'm no sterio man so maybe someone can help me out here. My impression was everything went through the amp to the speaker and not the otherway around right? Now I could understand if you had changed the amp and it blew the factory speakers as a way of denying warranty...

[bdragger]

I think you're right. Of course from their perspective, I could have crossed the speaker wires during install, shorting the amp. But the only way I could possibly do that is by running the amp while I do the install...

[joatmon]

was the bass only problem -something that you know was that way when you got the car-something that you know was not a problem when you got the car-something that may have been that way but you didn't notice it when you bought the car, but noticed it later and don't know when the problem started?

[bdragger]

I noticed it as soon as I bought it - I was actually inside the dealership. Unfortunately, I bought the car (with 15k miles) at a VW dealer. I told the salesman at VW about the problem. They referred me to the Pontiac dealer. When I told the service advisor at Pontiac, he recommmended switching to aftermarket speakers...I did the switch, found the problem persisted, (in my mind validating my claim that there's a problem with the car) and was told I had voided the warranty.

[Mavrik]

why would they tell you to switch to aftermarket speakers while still under warranty? I don't reccommend this often but I'd be giving GM customer satisfaction assistance a call. This doesn't really make sense. I'm a service advisor and I never tell people to fix their probs with aftermarket parts, specially when the vehicle is in warranty.

[bdragger]

I called on a Saturday morning. He was probably just trying to blow me off so he could go home for the weekend without another car coming through.I called Pontiac customer support and documented the whole process. They recommended going to another dealer. When I called another out-of-town dealer, the service advisor agreed with you, but still couldn't do anything because the warranty is void.