Service Manager: Porsche limiting customer access to DME
 

Hi,
I'm a relatively new owner of an '07 997TT CPO and recently went through the process of obtaining a DME report. I was handed a photocopy of a picture of the scanner's screen showing the 'number of ignitions' section of the report and nothing else. I inquired about the rest of the report and was told by the service manager that Porsche won't allow them to print out a report to give to the customer anymore. He acknowledged doing it routinely in the past, but said Porsche has changed their policy.

I asked to get the rest of the relevant info--hours at which overrevs occurred and total operating hours--and received a couple more pictures from the tech without any fuss. I still don't have what I understand to be the full report, but I don't really care.

I noticed at least one other person here complaining that a dealer was limiting access to the DME report to a picture of the scanner, so I figured I would chime in. Everything about my experience has been great, and I have no reason to believe the service guy was lying to me.

Thinking about it, I doubt it's a coincidence that I received my DME info the same way as another potential buyer here. In fact, I'm not at all surprised if Porsche has changed their policy regarding the DME reports. This is my first post here, but I've done A LOT of reading. Between the high incidence of OCD among us car lovers and the ambiguous implications of any given report, it appears that many perfectly good Porsches have been passed on, resulting in depreciation directly tied to the availability of the DME reports.

Thinking about it further, the cars being hit by this phenomenon are manuals. Being a manual guy, I tend to believe that we'd all be better off if Porsche would completely cut access to the DME reports. The last thing we need is an additional PIA for Porsche associated with selling manual trannys, particularly now that they're selling the PDK, which some mildly-insane people seem to believe is a suitable alternative.:)

LP

I find it very hard to believe that a company can limit your access to information on a product (in this case car) that you own. I am hoping that someone with more/direct knowledge can chime in. I'll be calling my contacts also.

Cheers.

I had the same thing when I recently had my car inspected by the dealership. They explained it me that the report was some ridiculous amount of pages and this was just the easiest way to get the most important part of the report to show.

I have always wondered, if Porsche doesn't have a problem certifying a car with over revs even in range 5 and if race shops have no issues maintaining the track cars with over revs then why in the world, people here on the forums have such a big problem with them :confused:

So how many of us here on the forum have actually seen or caused damage to their cars with these over revs?

It is an indicator of POTENTIAL abuse - which alerts a potential buyer to inspect other parts of the car for corroborating evidence of misuse. There may not be any problem with the car, but it serves to let buys be ware that they need to take a look at the car more closely, often times even more so than what the "PPI" entails.

Yes it could and should be used along with other parameters to inspect a car but never just on it's own. The problem is, we keep hearing on this and other boards not to buy a car with anything over range 3.

Not sure what the answer is though. It's a great tool but it has created quite a bit of unnecessary anxiety too.

The dealer who inspected my car informed me that the DME can be reset by a tuner, and it looked like my ECU had been flashed. So I had to basically ignore it, since it had all zeros in all ranges. So keep that in mind as well, those values can be reset.

not surprised by the practice. I dont look at it as Porsche not allowing you to look at it but rather they wont do it for you. Im sure an indy shop with the right tool can do it?

This way they act like they still own the car.:(

Well, from a Porsche / Dealer perspective I feel they owe the responsibility to declare the source of a rejection for CPO coverage for instance very much in line with disclosures made by Credit companies as it does affect your purchase and your potential cost of ownership further down the road. So I consider this to be a disclosure statement and I do understand that users and prospects now are using the tools available that can and will be used against Porsche in cases of failures and maintenance, repair and soon also recall actions and movements by customers that can cost Porsche an arm and a dogleg! From a buyers perspective, knowing that a Porsche engine can and does get over-exercised from time to time I would want to know what I am buying as the flipside can end up as a huge bill for repair and / or a new engine to the tune of 20K - 40 K dollars for the GT & TT models. So, personally, if I would not get access to the proof that the engine is sound and has in fact being driven and maintained as Porsche suggests in their handbook and user manuals, I would pass on the car and potentially on the Brand altogether. ECU Validation is a major part of the health of the vehicle, just like a CarFax, a visual inspection and a test drive as they, all together, establish the value of that specific car.

All that I can add to this thread is that I bought a CPO 2009 in 2012 and was given the DME report with no trouble at all at one dealer (Rusnak, where I bought) and at Porsche of West Houston you would think I was asking for a colonscopy of the Sales Manager's wife. West Houston lost my business over this issue, after telling some tales and presenting data that was at best "massaged".