Toyota Dealer Throttle Body Cleaning

If you break your throttle body because you think you know how not to break it, then what’s the cost?


How many “stealerships suck!” guys on this forum alone have drained their trans fluid during an oil change, then have the truck towed to the dealer?

It’s easy to fake competency until it’s time to work with your hands.

 

Honestly, probably none.

 

Wrong-o.

 

LMAOIts like when you are in a restaurant and they bring you some fake plastic desserts afterwards so they can explain what they are and see if you would get one or not. HILARIOUS!!!

 

Best one I’ve had was they brought me the cabin air filter and I asked how they got to it since I keep my glovebox locked and only gave them the fob, keeping the key.

He back pedaled real fast saying this must be for another customers car then.

 

Wow that’s crazy, never had mine nearly that bad. I bet it does that sucker was full!

 

I can tell you for a fact my former dealership is a piece of shit, not saying they all are but my former was. I do like the one we bought my wife’s car from.

 

I know most dealers try to upsell on stuff, but sitting in the waiting room at Toyota is like scam warehouse for the gullible and elderly. Ive never seen any other manufacturer try to add something to every single person that is in service like Toyota does. I sit as far away as I can, because I will call them out on it.

 

Unethical business isn’t exclusive to dealerships, obviously.

But they are for profit businesses with high overhead, and prices reflect that.

 

While there are those that are all thumbs, there are so many more that are quite capable of figuring stuff out. It takes some common sense to not horse down vice grips on a plastic tube, pull hard on an electrical wire instead of undoing the clip, round off a nut using pliers, over torque a steel bolt in an aluminum block, or use acetone to remove bird shit on your paint. It kind of insults me when people say I can't figure it out. Many of us have that logic and common sense to know right from wrong methods. I would suggest that most people don't work on vehicles because someone or marketing ad convinced them they aren't capable. Many just flat out don't want to do it or have more money than sense anyway. Some of us can figure it out and apply a little intelligence to what we are doing. Some of us also know when the guy on the YouTube channel is a fool doing something for the first time vs. an experienced person who is just helping the rest of us.

 

I didn’t say you, but everybody is a fool when doing something for the first time - some less so than others.

The bigger point is they’re there providing a service, customers come to them. They’re given a price before work is done, and they either agree to it or they don’t.

A dealership may charge $600 for brakes that a smaller independent shop with much lower overhead may be happy to charge you $520 for. That increase in cost is easily justified to people who don’t work on their own cars when the logo on the technicians shirt is the same logo that’s on their car. That’s part of why “factory trained” is a great marketing bullet point, even though bolts are bolts and they all spin off the same.

Not everybody works on their own stuff for a thousand reasons, and if you want to charge someone $10 for a battery cleaning, you won’t keep your doors open when you’re on the scale of a dealership service department.

 

Some dealers are better than others. The worst ones are like the quick change oil places advising you to change everything, sometimes without even inspecting it.

 

Its always weird to me how everyone loves to circle jerk about how evil dealerships are for making profit but don't complain about ANY other industry. Why do they think dealerships should operate on razor thin margins when no other business does??

Do you guys have any idea what kind of markup is in furniture? Electronics? My best friend is a contractor he remodels bathrooms for like $25k a pop and each one costs him like $6k but people LOVE him for it. Do you guys jump on forums and rant about dentists upselling useless "specialized" $80 mouthwash that costs them literally $5?

I own a coffee shop and we roast our own beans so my cost per cup is like <.20 cents... but when I sell it for $3 no one negotiates and no one calls me evil despite a 1,400% markup.

Dealerships on average operate on low single digit margins, they invest MILLIONS into their stores: infrastructure, employees, flooring costs, tools, permits, taxes, advertising, utilities etc etc etc. All to make like 3% margins. I tip my hat to anyone willing to invest that much in a fairly risky business, dealerships fail ALL THE TIME so of course people that invest in them expect a return... but when they make a profit everyone calls them evil for it

Yeah there's some shady things that go on in the car business, but thats true about literally ANY business... so why are car dealerships so different?

If you don't know what you're doing and don't compare pricing you can get ripped off in literally ANY industry.

 

I think the difference is upselling / predatory behavior

 

You don't think there's upselling and predatory behavior in all the industries I just listed?? Even dentists upsell useless shit.

Again if you don't do your homework you'll be taken advantage of in ANY profit driven industry, thats just capitalism. I'm a capitalist so I still think its a better system than the alternatives but lets be real here...

 

Exactly!

 

If there was a dentist forum, I'm sure they'd get just as much hate, plus you're not factoring in insurance. Plus people are more than willing to pay 1400% markup on a nickel item vs 1400% mark-up on a 200$ item. It's just psychology

 

See my thread here, you'd laugh at the pricing. This was at Puente Hills Toyota, CA.

 

Yep, agreed, not all dealers are evil. Some are decent and charge a fair and honest price considering their overhead compared to a regular garage. People do however, circle-jerk-complain about the dealers that have a reputation for charging un-informed people a shit ton above what is a fair margin. I owned my own business too and complaints always more than tripled compliments so.....
People are lead to believe that they must have their vehicles serviced at the dealer. If I wanted my gutters cleaned or my bathroom renovated and was told i’d have to get it done by the company that built my house, i’d expect to pay more too. It definitely pays to research and shop around for everything in life.