Frame replacement - dealership holding my truck ransom

Damn dude. At the end of the day, you need new shocks and the dealership already has your vehicle in pieces and has the shocks. Spend the the money to get new shocks and stop nickel and diming everything.

Life is too short to get yourself worked up over a couple hundred bucks that you’re going to have to spend anyway.

 

OP just said "The dealerships are raking it in with these frame replacements"

 

The dealers get paid something like 40 hours of labor by corporate and all parts are paid for by corporate, when they do the swap in less than 40 hours that's free money for the dealership.

 

I don't see the joke here...the dealerships do get paid to do the frame swap, they get paid by Toyota. It's not coming out of their pocket, it's work and it's $$$$ for them, just like any other job.

 

I know.. apparently corporate isn't paying for the shocks though. They are considered a wear item to an insurance company, which is basically what/who is paying for the frame swap. The dealer doing the swap is not responsible for them breaking. They were rusty, they had to come off. Corporate is not gonna cover them, OP has to pay..

 

@fast5speed i am not missing any points. I know and understand your frustration. I am also in the NoVA area and was trying to help you source a set of rear shocks. If you want to keep fighting your dealer, more power to you. You started a thread asking for advice, and a lot of good advice has been given. But its not what you want to hear so its falling on deaf ears. You had your mind made up before starting this thread how you wanted the resolution solved.

Sounds like you have hit a dead end with the dealership, so call corporate, start a case, and let them deal with it. That will be my last bit of "advice" to you.

Best of luck to you. Take care.

 

Welcome to the entitlement society..... OP has bad shocks and wants someone else to pay for it cause he feels he deserves free shocks. Bad shocks, hey, no problem ..... why not just ask them for a free brand new truck cause your 13 year old one is going bad. Maybe ask them to buy you a new house as well while they’re at it.

This is the one time I agree with the dealership. They are trying to prevent a Tacoma owner from hurting themselves.

 

Depends. Were the shocks leaking when he dropped it off? If yes, i think the dealer has a case. If they were in good working order, i think the op has a case. If it weren't for the shittty frame, the shock would have never been busted.

Regardless, dealer should have called alot sooner so the op coule make an informed descision and procure the shocks he wanted

 

Service manager at dealership during my frame replacement told me Toyota is putting $11k into my '06. That's $11k to the dealership times hundreds of trucks just in this one metro area. Seems like a watershed moment for every individual dealership in the area to build good will to all Toyota owners with the problem. But alas they just don't get it.

 

True, I don't think the dealerships get that kind of money though...Toyota supplies the frame and necessary parts so they (the dealers) aren't making money on that. But Toyota gives the dealerships something like 40+ hours of labor fees to do the swap, last I checked my local dealership had a $125/hr labor fee so that's a good $5k for each swap job. Still good money for them

 

Plus the cost of the rental for x number of weeks.

The dealership is making out just fine and the OP gets all sorts of new parts.

Neither one has anything to bitch about.

... But apparently the attitude of the SW pissed off the OP. I could see that upsetting me.

I can't see the OP complaining about ponying up for a set of shocks, though.

 

Warranty labor rate is much lower than retail labor rate, probably just enough to pay the tech plus a little more.

5k sounds like a lot for a weeks work but it really isn't. I try to produce at least 5k worth of repair at a minimum

 

If you end up having to buy your own shocks, check the TW marketplace for OEM used shocks- I recently sold mine for an embarrassing discounted amount after I replaced them with 5100’s.

Edit: oh, sorry - just read all of this thread...you already knew all that

 

Ah I didn't know that, well that would explain why dealerships probably aren't as excited as people think they should be when a frame swap comes in, that's a lot of time that their techs have to spend on one job for less than what they could make off of non-warrantied customers. Even if it's half the rate it's still a cool $2.5k or so, but it's still a time-consuming job comparatively.

 

The techs make out the best. They get to do a job with no distractions for the whole week.

If the techs have experience doing the frame swap, they can beat the time allowed by Toyota to do the swap.

 

And it's a fist-fight between the dealer and corporate to get corporate to pony up for all the rusty shocks and bullshit that no one could see going in.. Corporate has an army of lawyers telling them what they will and won't cover. Shocks are on the do not cover list.

 

Makes sense, but I guess that brings us back to the issue where they want to still charge him for installing shocks that he provides...which I don't really understand. If his OEM shocks were still good, they'd be putting them back on anyway as part of the swap, all he is doing is giving them new ones to put back on. Seems to me like they just want more $$$ by telling him that he has to pay for that extra labor

edit: actually I'm not sure if that's the situation he's in, I just remember reading about that scenario a page or two back. At the end of the day it's a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, and if they were being insistent I'd probably just do it to get it over with, then find a different dealership/shop to do future business with.

 

Alot of places will not install customer supplied parts. I won't unless I really know the customer well.

 

I guess I'm lucky Ive found a few shops that have had no issue with it, including the local Toyota dealership. They wanted to install my SPC UCAs when I told them I was getting them, lol.

I've only run into one shop that wouldn't do that and that was because they wouldn't touch anything aftermarket at all, even if they ordered it. Every place I've been to though that will install my supplied parts, will not offer me a warranty on the work...but that's fine, I would expect that.

 

I think Toyota is being generous here, they just put more money into the truck than its worth.
Are these the original shocks we are talking about? If so, they are shot anyway and they probably had to destroy them to get them off. I'd put a decent set of shocks on a be happy with all the new parts I didn't have to pay for.