I was driving back from Boston to DC. Just north of Newark Airport, while driving at highway speeds (60mph) there was a very loud explosive noise. My immediate reaction was that I blew a tire but I quickly realized that the steering was find. I then thought that maybe a truck I had just passed blew a tire but that wasn't the case either. Then I noticed a lot of wind noise in the car. I pulled off at the next rest stop and discovered that my sunroof was shattered. In fact, part of it was missing and the glass around the the missing piece was pointed upwards. Clearly, my sunroof had exploded.

After checking online, I discovered that there are hundreds of stories about this phenomenon--these range from individual reports to complaints files with NHTSA to articles in trade publications about auto glass. Clearly, this is a major safety issue.

I went to my dealership, Lindsay Lexus, in Arlington, Virgina. To say that they were less than helpful would be an understatement. It took them several days to send any information to Lexus. In fact, I have no evidence that they ever did. I had to make three trips to the dealership to find out what was going on. It took them 7 days to finally tell me that they would not cover the damage. When I started to complain, they had the service manager call me. He was aggressive from the start and wanted me to understand clearly that they would do nothing about the problem.

I bought a Lexus because I was led to believe that I would have a different customer service experience. I did, but not in a good way. I felt a Yugo dealer would have treated me better. Don't get me wrong. You can have as much coffee, tea, sodas, fruit, cookies, donuts, ice cream as you want while you sit in one of the three luxurious waiting rooms. Just don't expect them to actually give you good service. I guess that's why there have been 10 complaints filed with the local BBB over the past few years and the local service guide, Consumer Checkbook, doesn't give them a rating for either quality or price.

Hopefully, there will be a skillful lawyer out there who sees the opportunity for a class action lawsuit.