Caution: Earnhardt Toyota

This is my first and only experience I will be having with Earnhardt Toyota. At roughly 54K miles I noticed my valve timing cover was leaking oil, after searching around here a bit I found it was covered under the 60K power train warranty. I scheduled an appointment and was relieved to know this was going to be taken care of.

When I went to go pick the truck back up the service manager showed me around the truck and briefly talked about the work they did, they even ran it through the car wash. At this point I was pretty satisfied. As the manager was handing me my keys he informed me that my rack and pinion was busted and I was leaking steering fluid all over. We took a look and sure thing, the undercarriage of the truck was soaked with a thick oily fluid coming from the boot of the rack and pinion. Along with this he also added that my spark plugs needed to be replaced, as well as the package for the cabin air filter. With everything I was quoted just short of $1700.00.

I found the spark plugs and cabin air filter strange because I just replaced them a few thousand miles prior to this service, so I went ahead and wrote those off. This really got me thinking though so I stopped by a couple shops to get the rack and pinion looked at. From what they could tell nothing appeared broken and they cleaned up the area for me and told me to keep an eye on my fluid levels and whether more was coming out of the boot. So for the next week or two I looked every day. The fluid levels remained the same, and no more fluid appearing to come out of the boot and no spots on the ground where I regularly park. Now, 10K miles later there are still no signs of damage. I can only suspect they themselves made the truck look damaged in order to get more business.

I figure I would share this experience up here for you AZ guys, I doubt they are the only dealer who would do this kind of thing but this is just a heads up for any of you looking to get service done at this dealer.

 

As in everything, there's good and bad. It's not the first time a dealership got caught with this kind of action. Not too long ago there was a yahoo story about a Chevy dealership that got recorded with the techs saying they are gonna mess up the clutch on a camaro they are servicing and in the recording they were doing a few burnouts.

 

Funny how some dealerhships pay attention to yelp.com. Post it on yelp and you'd probably get a phone call from customer relations asking you to come back to re-evaluate their diagnosis and a free oil change though you'd be a fool to come back.

 

Damn, they're all 5 stars or 1 star I wonder how many of the 5 star raters just haven't realized they got screwed yet.

 

Is that the one out by Superstition Springs Mall?

 

Bought parts from that dealer with no issues. I think it's like this with all dealer's service derpts.

 

They create their own 'fake' accounts and rate themselves really well.

 

Earnhardt dealerships across the valley have been crooks for the last 20 years or so. Once upon a time they were a major company that people trusted, "That ain't no bull!"

 

Perhaps, but I'm sure some are better than others. I have been to Avondale Toyota 5-6 times over the last 10 years or so and was treated very fairly. They have demonstrated to me on several occasions that they have no interest in "fixing" something that isn't broken, and have earned my trust. That's said, I'm sure somebody had a bad experience there (and I have no idea how their sales dept is).

 

Thats true, out of all the dealerships, I've felt Avondale to be most honest. I've had a few things go missing at Superstition. Also I've been wanting to take the truck in for a transmission flush but am kinda hesitant.

 

I take my truck to Champion Toyota in Phila. The only one I will let service my vehicle is a personal friend I've known for over 30 yrs , he stated working on Toyotas when he came back from Vietnam and is one of the most knowledgeable Techs you can find , however the Honda dealer tried to charge my wife over 500.00 to fix a oil leak that the car never had, and sell her a 750.00 brake job she did not need .

 

I go to Camelback toyota and I feel like they are ok people. No complaints.

 

Sorry to hear about your experience. Under handed for sure.

This reply on Yelp made me lol - "Nothing I enjoy more than being held hostage deep in Mesa. Was getting ready to put a call into the SEALS to come and get me."

Never a problem with big2 (yet)

Az

 

This. It's real easy to create a fake account to rate your business. I had my roof done recently and checked out one company who has 5 star rating and I looked closely at the accounts and they were made within a week or two apart from each other.

 

I won't ever deal with Earnhardt's again.. Back in the day when I was a LEO, I went over to their Dodge dealership in Glendale to look at buying a ram truck, when I asked to take it for a test drive they asked for my keys and a copy of my DL. I was shocked that they let me drive off without a sales guy. After about 30 mins I came back and after another 90 mins of jacking around with prices and getting screwed around on my trade, I decided I was going to walk on the deal.

The next thing I know the sales manager comes over refusing to give me my keys back and starts to try a strong arm sales tactic. I quickly informed him that failure to return my keys constitutes theft and that I would be forced to get the police involved, calling my bluff and still unwilling to return my keys, I was forced to notify him that I was a police officer as I put him face down on the desk and put the bracelets on him.

I'm not sure how some companies stay in business for so long using BS tactics like that.. I know times are tough out there but karma is a bitch and screwing someone is just going to come back and bite you in the ass...

 

This just got more interesting! Did you take the bastard in?