Jeep fails to fess up to a major problem

It's no wonder American automakers are in trouble. Between the unreliability of their products and poor customer satisfaction rates, it's hard to get behind U.S.-made vehicles. You would think this would have improved by now.

For the second time, my 2006 Jeep Liberty had a regulator break on a window. The first time it happened, I thought it was just one of those things. The vehicle was still under warranty, so it was no big deal.

Then it happened again yesterday, this time to a different window. The person at the dealership said it was common but there was no recall on the Jeeps. This time, with my warranty expired, I had to pay for Jeep/Chrysler's idiotic engineering of a part that simply doesn't last very long and also causes windows to break (an additional expense for the glass).

So today I filed complaints with Jeep/Chrysler and also filled out a form with a government agency responsible for tracking recalls. Jeep/Chrysler, in their words, has 24 hours to respond to my request for reimbursement. If they don't respond or don't pay for the repair, then I have to take this further. It was also disheartening to be told by the person in charge of complaints that he knew nothing about the problem with Liberty window regulators. The dealership, where it was repaired, sure knew about the problem.

If you simply Google "Jeep complaints" the first thing you will see is a site with complaints about this very problem. So it's not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, it appears to be the most-reported problem of any Jeep model in the last decade. Yet, the guy on the phone at Jeep said he was unaware of it?

When something similar happened to my wife's Jetta several years ago, Volkswagen made good and paid for the full repair. While there was no official recall despite the Jetta models having window problems, the German-automaker seemed more willing to satisfy the customer. That's good business. Of course, if you buy dependable models from Honda, you likely won't have any problems in the first place. My wife now drives a CR-V. Not a single issue in nearly four years.

What's scary about Jeep is that the new part that was replaced is of the same design and could break again tomorrow. There's no way of telling when the windows will break or whether glass will shatter. There are even reports, according to the dealership, where the regulators break so violently that they rip apart the door locking system. I have three other windows that could go at any time, including the other one that was previously repaired.

Jeep/Chrysler, which recently merged with Italian manufacturer, Fiat, should do a better job at taking care of an obvious flaw in design that has cost thousands of Liberty owners a ton of money. Whether this is a safety issue or not is irrelevant in my mind. Jeep/Chrysler is making thousands off of repairs of a part designed to fail.

UPDATE: Jeep has agreed to pay for the cost of the repair, minus $100 for what they said was a "deductible." Not exactly sure what that means since this is not an insurance issue, but I will now wait to see if they actually cut me a check. I did not, however, get any indication from Jeep that this defect will be fixed once and for all, either through a recall, or a voluntary redesign/replacement of all four window mechanisms.