A 2020 Dodge Ram owner decried how a St. Augustine, Florida dealership handled her truck’s steering wheel and electrical errors. Alicia Marrero (@aliciagringamarrero) shared her ire in a viral TikTok that’s accrued more than 210,000 views on the application.
In the near 10-minute clip, she highlighted how she and her husband were given the run-around with her truck. Moreover, she criticized Hanania Dodge Jeep Chrysler’s service department for the way it handled what she says was a dangerous and recurring issue.
Dodge Ram Electrical Problems
Marrero begins her video by urging anyone considering buying a Dodge to stay away from the manufacturer at all costs. (Editor’s Note: This doesn’t reflect the opinion of Motor1 staff. Ram 1500s are great trucks and we await the return of the Hemi with glee; But hell hath no fury like a Dodge owner scorned.) She then delves into her ownership story of a 2020 Dodge Ram Big Horn 1500 that her family purchased in 2024. Living with the vehicle, she states, has felt like a “fever dream.”
The TikToker states that after six months of driving, the vehicle’s steering wheel would sporadically lock up. Accompanying this scary scenario was a slew of other problems that appear to be tied to the car’s electrical systems. Additionally, whenever the wheel would seize, she says the Ram’s windshield wipers would go on and off.
She added that this issue would occur at random, creating “extremely dangerous” driving scenarios. Subsequently, she and her husband brought the truck to a Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler dealership to assess what could be wrong with the car.
Prior to handing the keys over to the service department, the couple prefaced that the problem occurs out of the blue. However, they told techs that when the truck is turned on, they’ll see electrical service warning lights pop up. This, Marrero explained, was directly tied to their steering wheel problem.
Quick Steering Wheel Fix?
Next, Marrero said it wasn’t long before the shop workers gave them back their keys, proclaiming the vehicle was fixed. She expressed her shock at the alacrity with which they were able to repair the issue. However, she wanted to know what the issue was, so she pressed the techs for information.
According to her, they said a “loose battery cable” was the culprit. The couple forked over the cost of the repair, but immediately upon starting the Ram up, the “same [expletive] warning” light popped up on the dash cluster. The service employee didn’t seem too perturbed by this, however. Marrero says they were instructed to drive the vehicle and that they’d be “totally fine” and the lights would soon disappear.
So, they drove the car back home. But the following morning, after attempting to start the Ram, they were met with a completely broken-down vehicle. Frustrated, she phoned up the dealership and questioned their repair protocol.
Because they were unable to drive the truck, Marrero said she had to get the vehicle towed back to the dealership. What’s more is that the couple ate the cost of the tow: $180. Techs then inspected the vehicle further and believed they found the root of the issue.
Ram Recall
Marrero states that the service department informed her that a power control module recall was responsible for their driving woes. Furthermore, they mentioned that some 1.5 million Ram models were affected as part of the recall. Again, the dealer said that this was an easy fix. All they had to do was update their system and get the customers on their merry way.
So, they did just that. The car turned on, and they drove back home. However, history soon repeated itself, as when they keyed on the Ram, they were met with the same electrical error message.
This, again, prompted them to return the truck to the dealership, and workers said that the actual issue was with a “leak in the brake light.” For some reason, workers there proposed that a “crack in the glass” of the rear light was responsible for the electrical warning error message. So, they fixed the crack, but at this point in her video, Marrero wasn’t exactly expressing confidence in their work.
Additionally, the car’s infotainment screen was completely black, she says, so they couldn’t use GPS or any of its additional features. This meant they had to leave the vehicle overnight and travel the 45 minutes to get back home. While the dealership managed to get the screen to power on, the electrical error message was still presenting itself.
Persistent Error Message
Tired of the constant back and forth with the dealership, Marrero and her husband gave up. They did notice, however, that the electrical problems almost always happened in hotter weather. Their dealership back-and-forth occurred in January, and then, sometime in May, the problem returned.
All this time, Marrero states that she was also waiting for a call back from the dealership with a proposed fix. However, the couple didn’t want to dedicate time to it because of how time-consuming an ordeal it was. But now, since the electrical issues were becoming worse, she called up the business notifying them of their woes.
Marrero said that all of the problems appeared to be directly linked to the power control module recall. She remarked that either the techs didn’t perform the update properly or the issue was with the power control module itself.
So, she decided to escalate the issue with the CEO of the dealership, CCing them and others at the business on an email. Consequently, they were given a loaner car, which an employee there repeatedly reminded her “costs money.” After two and a half weeks, a tech called her and said that they weren’t seeing any error messages on the truck.
Furthermore, they claimed to have driven the vehicle “everywhere” and that they never replicated the issue. Marrero said that the issue was with the dash warnings, to which the worker responded that he didn’t see any. After bringing the loaner back and retrieving her Ram, Marrero says that the error lights were on the dashboard in full display.
‘Look a little further’
The TikToker voiced her displeasure with the “idiots” working at the dealership. She believes that if they had simply looked into the issue a little further, they could have adequately fixed the problem. According to her, the service reports all indicate that there are several issues related to the Power Control Module. That’s because the myriad of service report codes all reference “PCM” problems.
Moreover, she said that no one at the service department checked the power steering mechanism or PCM to see if they were malfunctioning, either. Additionally, she said her grievances were exacerbated by the “rude” correspondence she had with employees at the dealership.
Their problems didn’t end there, however. She reveals that she was recording her video after yet another visit to the dealership. A young employee approached the car with a code tester, and the car revealed it was a vacuum pump error. Since the car was officially out of warranty in January, the business said Marrero would have to pay for a new vacuum pump out of pocket.
The $700 fix, Marrero said, was an additional expense she and her husband couldn’t cover at the time. In response, she says an employee at the dealer said they could fix it themselves. However, Marrero wasn’t keen on heeding this advice. If she did, she speculates the dealer would say that they must’ve ruined something in the car, absolving them from any potential problems with her Ram.
Closing out her clip, she said that she contacted several news outlets to let them know of her disappointment with the dealership’s service.
Dodge Recalls
Indeed, there have been powertrain control module recalls for Dodge trucks. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) posted as such in this recall release. The document states that around 5,000 vehicles may have been built with “misaligned capacitors.” Consequently, this could “create a short to ground and cause an internal PCM loss of communication.”
The NHTSA also delineated in another recall for various 2018 models, including Dodge Ram trucks, that the 12,766 affected vehicles “may have been manufactured with a suspect voltage regulator chip.”
In both of the above-mentioned recalls, the NHTSA recommends replacing and reprogramming the PCM modules. One of the documents also recommends that dealers put customers in a loaner vehicle if the car must be kept overnight.
In December of 2024, Stellantis (which owns Dodge) had to recall 317,630 “heavy-duty pickup trucks.” The problem was related to “reduced braking performance.” Months earlier in the same year, Consumer Reports wrote that Dodge recalled some 1.2 million trucks. The problem? Electronic stability control.
Motor1 has reached out to Hanania Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram and Dodge via email and to Marrero via TikTok comment for further information.
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