Foreign Cars Italia

[BahnStrmr6@domain.elided]

Hello all.  I sold my Alfa Romeo 164 today, so I'll be leaving the list 
shortly.  I want to thank all of you for all the help you have given me since 
I bought the Alfa.  Also, I wanted to relate a [bad] experience I had with 
the Alfa Romeo dealership in Greensboro, North Carolina.
After trying to resolve the problem with my faulty brake lights myself, 
unsuccessfully, I decided to take it to Foreign Cars Italia.  The mechanic 
checked over everything, except my dad had to tell him where the brake light 
relay was located, after the mechanic spent a half hour trying to find it in 
the passenger compartment.  It ended up to be a shorted wire, wich was 
replaced.  Also, the Airbag light was reset.  It took the mechanic 
(supposedly) 12 hours for the brake lights and two for the airbag.  They 
wanted to charge us $935 for the whole thing.  My dad had driven the car to 
NC (I live in VA), and had planned to drive it back the same day, but FCI 
gave him a rental car that was supposedly complementary.  When my dad and I 
drove down two days later, the car was fixed, but we had to haggle with the 
owner to get them to lower the outrageous bill.  While we were on our way 
home, they called my house and told us that we needed to pay the bill for the 
rental car, and threatened to report us to a Credit Union if we didn't.  We 
ended up paying the $60 bill, but plan to report them to the Better Business 
Bureau.
That's my story.  Although the workmanship was fine, I was less than 
satisfied with the level of professionalism I encoutered with Foreign Cars 
Italia.

This will be my last posting to the Alfa Digest, and, again, I appreciate all 
your help.
Stephen

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