As for the review, I’ll summarize it as:
2009 Subaru Outback – decent car, LOTS of little issues. Not even remotely up to the legacy (no pun intended) of my 1988 wagon.
Wentworth Subaru – two thumbs down, one middle finger up
Long story short, when moving to Portland from CA I had my kayak on my Subaru OEM rack with the Yakima aftermarket kayak cradles. Somehow, some way, the Subaru crossbars BUCKLED, causing the front/rear straps to come undone and the kayak to flop all around. Fast forward to today, brought my 2009 Outback into Wentworth Subaru to have the crossbars looked at for warranty work (as well as the leaking front passenger footwell due to horribly designed AC evap tube routing, still need to get it in for the shifting issues and other shit when I have more time to leave it….). Just got the call a few minutes ago that the crossbars won’t be covered by them because ‘when they sell the kayak cradles to their customers they tell them they should also buy the round bars’. This is regardless of the fact that the weight was well under the load limit Subaru mentions in their owners manual, Subaru making no mention of any sort of crossbar change out needing to carry kayaks, and in fact shows kayaks being held on the OEM aero bars.
I’m a reasonable person, and it seems to me that when your whole company’s reputation is predicated on outdoorsy Portland beardos, and one of those comes in with a one in a million issue (I mean seriously you couldn’t recreate this if you tried) that doesn’t cost you anything to fix outside of the opportunity cost of the labor, than why wouldn’t you fix it and create a long-term customer? In this day of decreased consumer spending, as well as Yelp, Twitter, etc. making it easier for one person to quickly get the word out to many, you’d think companies would go out of their way for their customers (especially brand loyal ones) as opposed to reaching for excuses (because really, when he was explaining it to me on the phone and I’d point out a flaw in his thinking he’d reverse direction and go down a new path). I mean here was a case where a potential new customer walks into (zero marketing cost to them) Wentworth Subaru’s service department (the profit center of a dealership), and instead of capturing a new customer they’ve got a one star review on Yelp, RTs galore and made Everett Street Auto a new customer. Business 101 fail.
Hmm....aero bars carrying a kayak??!?!?
Aero bars....and note the straps aren't even being used per manufacturer's recommendation...
Rack buckled, one in a million (unwarranteed) failure
More buckling
