Painful trip to the dealer today

To the OP - I live in southern MD. Jeff Auman of Auman automotive in Mechanicsville is a certified Toyota Master mechanic, extremely honest and a great guy. Also, his brother Tommy is a master mechanic at Toyota of SOMD, he is also a honest and great guy. I would try one of those guys. Ive used them a few times and would highly recommend them.

 

While you can work on your own vehicle, and have service work done at any service/repair shop, when it comes to a FACTORY warranty repair (i.e. the 3yr/36k mile) then that repair work must be done by a factory authorized repair facility. Now there ARE a few select auto repair facilities who do have factory certification, but those are rare and in between. There are PLENTY of aftermarket or EXTENDED factory warranties that will allow this work to be done at nearly any independent shop, but that is for extended warranty or aftermarket factory warranties. In my 30 years in the industry I have never seen a FACTORY original warranty claim be authorized at an independent shop. Part of this is that factory original warranties require that the work be done by factory certified technicians, and using factory parts.

Now I won't go as far as to say that a shop doesn't do repair work on a factory original warranty and get occasionally paid for it, but I will say that the factory can deny payment if they so choose to, and you can't force them to pay.

 

I would tell that dealer to go pound sand and never go back.

 

I feel like I am in the twilight zone.....or there is some chain-yanking going on around this place.

 

when my 05 went in for frame replacement last year the dealer said if they found anything wrong would replace it at the cost of parts.
I went to pick it up and they gave me a list of thing it needed, including steering rack, wheel bearing, drive belt.
Had bearing done by local mechanic for $375 dealer wanted $850. (was bad making whining noise)
Went to 2 shops told me rack was fine, did drive bely myself.
Asked why they didn't do these things when it was apart they said didn't notice. scam
Dealer was a rip off!!! will never go back

 

So they missed something that could have made them money, and they were a scam? I mean I get the drive belt. They probably didn't take a look at the belt when swapping out the engine itself to another frame. Did they miss it? yeah. Did they scam you? Not likely.

What I would have asked if they said the rack was bad, was what they found. I have seen some shops miss things that others didn't. Without having all of the information to be armed with, it is always hard to pass judgement.

 

Bill, what he's saying about this story being a scam is the service dept said they would replace parts, free of labor. After the frame swap, they claim to not have noticed the problems. That being said, the dealer can now charge for labor with parts.

.... That's how I understand the story.

 

Bama and File IFR -

"Bill, what he's saying about this story being a scam is the service dept said they would replace parts, free of labor. After the frame swap, they claim to not have noticed the problems. That being said, the dealer can now charge for labor with parts."

This was the point I wanted to make.
Should have mention I told them about the bearing and rep I dealt with told me they would check over the whole truck.
Maybe I should just blame the rep I dealt with.

There are some good dealers out there. When I first got truck went in for trans service at different dealer and after pulling it into the bay the came out and told me it had just been done by previous owner. Could have charged me anyway. (Gave them tip$)

Will return to them next time I need to go to dealer, problem is they are not that close to where I live/work

 

I am surprised your blinker fluid and muffler bearings weren't mentioned, they are usually the first things that need to be replaced when you bring your vehicle into the dealership....They never try this s*** with me but my GF is constantly getting hustled by these guys until I go in...pisses me off to no end.

 

I would say the rep probably dropped the ball on this rather than the dealership itself being a scam. You are most likely right on that point. I admit I do get defensive because I hate how so many people say the dealerships are a rip off and every one is a scam. Not that you said that directly, but so many people DO say that. If they all were such a scam, then they certainly couldn't remain in business like they do. I have worked in dealerships for some 25 years, and I would say out of the 100+ techs and 20+ service writers I have known, I have only seen 2 techs that would try to upsell something that wasn't actually necessary, and 1 writer who tried to do the same. And in those 3 cases the writer and one tech was fired by the dealership as soon as they found out, and the other technician I fired myself.

Sadly it is like they say in just about any service industry: A happy customer will tell 1 person, an unhappy person will tell 20. So yeah, the bad stuff gets pushed more often than the good stuff.

 

Completely agree. I have no vested interest in this situation. However, from a consumer point of view, if one person at a business is dishonest or incompetent with me, then I'm likely going to write off that business and not use them in the future.

For me, I have only had one bad dealer experience with one of their techs being dishonest with me. As you alluded to, I now tell everyone I can not to use them, and have actually driven an hour out of my way just go so somewhere else.

While I understand your point and I try not to demonize a business for no reason, I also think that word of mouth is a consumer's best friend. If a business treats me poorly or doesn't keep their word, I'm not going to let my friends or family spend their hard-earned money there.

 

I can respect how you feel about a bad experience. Sadly this is a hard thing to deal with. I hate the idea of one bad apple ruining the entire batch though. I have had a bad experience with a service writer one time at a Nissan dealership. I simply asked for a different writer to work with from that point on. Always got great work done when I had to.

 

I went to a dealer for a recall item. Before the service manager gave me the keys she displayed a long list of items that needed immediate repair. Several of the items had been done recently by myself and a mechanic friend. When I told her that she said, "Well, you still need to do the other things, when would you like to schedule the repairs?". I said "never" and rode off. They get lucky sometimes, especially with inexperienced people and use the word "safety" often, implying they are worried about YOUR safety. Yeah, right.

 

For those that complain about the cost of going to a dealership. Manufacturers require dealership employees to have a certain level of knowledge about their products and processes and while most is online, some is classroom. This year my techs will attend, on average, 3 weeks of training each. This changes from year to year but generally, service employees are required to complete some kind of training every year. There are also requirements for things like the look and feel of the dealership, vehicle stocking requirements (representative of the brand's models), parts stocking levels, special tools (like a $50k diagnostic computer), etc, etc. I have access to technical experts to back me up for unique situations-and, if your warranty has just expired, I can make some decisions to do what's called goodwill repair as if you were still covered by warranty. Dealers also pay for tire/oil/hazardous material disposal, business licenses, licenses for the storage of chemicals, etc, etc. An independent doesn't need most of that so right off the bat, he can offer much lower prices.

When you go to an independent, you will not get the same level of service the manufacturer requires the dealer to give you. Will your vehicle be repaired correctly? Most likely since most shops want happy customers. But what happens when there are software updates? Or vehicle orders for specific problems you are having (like a software update but applied only as needed)? Or you want say a complete brake system bleed (to include the ABS pump)? The independent may or may not have the tools to do that (mfg's must make special service tools available for purchase but as you might guess, they're pretty expensive and hard to get most of the time. Snap-on and others also sell their versions of special tools (like diag computers) that work perfectly fine). When you go to an independent, you don't always know the brand of parts you're getting, the quality or how long they've been sitting around (some parts have shelf lives).

As far as quotas go? Sears tried that many years ago and it effectively killed their service business because, well, they were sued and lost. When you receive a multi-point inspection form (the red/yellow/green box form), that's for two reasons. One, to protect the business by noting the condition of your vehicle when it comes in ("it wasn't like that when I came in" can cost a shit load of money). And for you so that you know what your vehicle needs-my job is to provide you service and that is a part of the service. Do we try and sell you those services you might need? Yes. An independent would do that too. You can always decline.

As far as warranty coverage within your coverage period, some manufacturers will reimburse for repairs done outside of the dealership provided you can prove they were done and a dealer can certify they were done correctly. Most independent shops want to be paid for their work in a timely fashion and will charge you rather than risk eating the cost of a repair (which can be pretty expensive just in parts) hoping they get paid. Because I can be audited at any time, I personally don't like certifying repairs and I do charge for that because that isn't always a reimbursable part of the warranty claim and because the warranty claim might be denied during the audit process. This may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

The bottom line is you have a choice where to get your vehicle repaired. The dealer costs more because the dealer has requirements an independent shop doesn't. And just like bad dealers, there are bad independents too.

 

ian408, I agree with your dealer assessment and realize they have a huge overhead. In the late 80's and thru the 90's I had a Nissan 4WD and took it to a dealer in Orlando, Norman Brothers Nissan (they sold it some years back). They had a killer shop group and would take me back to show me something if they thought it needed repair. I was driving 60 miles, right past the local dealer, because I loved those guys! I just wished the "list" of repairs mentioned in my post was an honest assessment and not a test. That was years ago so maybe things have changed. I am taking the truck for frame inspection so we shall see.

 

I cannot really say what's what with your list. I would want to see it. But you know, it's easy to look at a vehicle and find things.

Personally, if I cannot explain why, then they are suggestions and I'll tell you that

 

As an update, I took the Tacoma to a shop recommended by Angie's list...they looked at it and agreed there was a bad bearing, but nothing else required action. $760 for the parts and labor on the bearing and I'm very pleased. I will probably flush the power steering fluid soon, but they said the slow weeping they saw was not a reason to replace the rack.

 

You can't really feel bad for a sucker can you?


Dave:
Half of those things you listed is routine maintenance on a vehicle at a certain point. You won't get any sympathy for whining about that. We all have to do those things. I would argue you aren't at that point yet at 61K though.
The other half of those things are 100% unnecessary.
Educate yourself on properly vehicle maintenance and you won't find yourself victim of BS. Also know that dealers charge a lot more than a regular shop would for the same service. You should not be shocked by price quotes given to you by a dealer.

 

Actually you would be surprised. It has been an ever growing trend for dealerships to be more competitively priced for service work. However a lot of times it also depends on the quality of the service. I have seen brake flushes at independent shops that has been nothing more than sucking out the master cylinder, filling it with fresh fluid, then walking away. And at a dealership that has the BG machine the entire system gets flushed out from master cylinder out with all new fluid. Now SOME independent shops do have the bigger machines, but I have seen more shops WITHOUT it than with it.

 

So?
Why does my system need to be flushed? Just drain and refill. Works just fine for almost all fluids.
It isn't better to have a machine do some magical flush. Also it's a machine doing it, the cost should be pretty minimal since the labor is near zero.