How big of a ride did the dealer take my wife on.

I sent my wife in for an oil change at the dealer. I was fine for the $110 bill that it was supposed to be as we are super busy getting the boat ready to drop in the water and I though this would save time. Wife came home with a $385 bill which was basically oil change plus cabin and air filter and some 'cleaning of ac system'. I yelled at my wife for getting ripped off which of course didn't go over well.

1)For each of the cabin and engine filters they charge $10 over MSRP with a $31 labor charge. I never hear of paying over MSRP for parts before at the dealer as the MSRP is already often high. From there - Am I wrong to be annoyed that labor for the cabin filter and the air filter was about $31 EACH. Even if shop time was $200 an hour $60 buys you 20 minutes of time do to what is no more then 5 minutes of work. Is the shop time to change the air filter really that much for these filters?

2)They told my wife the Header/AC system was dirty and did EVAP service cleaning for $55 plus $75 in parts. Does this actually clean the coils? I am a bit annoyed that they charged me $76 for parts that Toyota sells for $30-40 at MSRP. Again charging me above MSRP isn't cool. $55 in labor seems a bit much to spray two cans but my main gripe is - does this actually do anything? and charging my $75 in parts for a kit that Toyota sells for $30-40. If this actually cleans the coils and makes the AC run better then I do see some value in this. Is that what this actually does?

 

The first problem was taking your truck to a dealership for an oil change. Never do that. They charge twice, sometimes three times as much as your local shop that specializes in oil changes. She's partly to blame for the bill, but...so are you.

 

1st off apologize to your wife, secondly, yes she got ripped off.

 

It takes about 20-30 mins to do an oil change at home. I bet it took longer driving to the dealer, waiting and now you gotta deal with this…

 

To borrow from reddit AITA, ESH (everyone sucks here)...


Dealer sucks for overcharging and performing unnecessary service, but its well known thats what they do. Given that...

You should have prepared your wife better to decline additional services, or had the service manager call you directly about what they were doing.

 

If they used the Toyota a/c cleaning stuff, ya it works. Cleans the evaporator core pretty good. That being said with cabin filters these days it’s not really needed. It was fluff they sold to get more hours (techs are typically paid by the job, an oil change is .3 of an hour. Get .5 for an a/c service and .2 for a cabin filter and now the techs happier)

working for the dealer, yes this is standard practice. Luckily I’m not doing oil changes I’m typically doing larger repairs so I don’t take part in this scheme. So many people just do it it’s crazy

 

Got hosed. Only oil changes i go to dealer are first two yrs that are included. Rest i ll do or have local guy do. Dealers are extreme rip offs and you should take it to your own guy in future if you have one. Also they probably charged her what the book says it will take to do the job and did it in half the time. More profit for dealer. They took advantage of your wife. Not her fault.

 

Hey man, at least your wife didn't come home pregnant... You should be more worried about if they even changed the oil and filters that they charged you for.

 

Your fault. You should have warned her.
Apologize, dinner and flowers.

 

It is what it is. Learn from it

 

You sent your wife to scam city and yelled at her for getting scammed?
Don’t send her to any pyramid scheme meetings or ask her to talk to a Persian Prince about his finances, man.
Might have to yell at her again for going into a situation you told her to.

 

What's between you and your wife is your business.

An oil change I would do myself. Not take to the stealership. Hope you enjoyed the ride...

As for the Evaporator Coil clean out spray. Yes it will clean them out. We use it on coils at work. It helps with funky smells...

 

Agree - part of the blame is mine. No objection on that one

 

100% your own fault, for many reason's. No one the blame, but you...

 

Your fault. You should have taught her.
You already know you got hosed, so look in the mirror and blame and yell at the first person you see.

 

What's the point of this thread?

Yes it costs more to do this shit at the dealer.

The service is already done so what is the forum going to add to this other than telling you you're a douche for yelling at your wife and that you should just change your own oil?

 

This^^

She'll probably tell you, "don't ask me to do that ever again!".

My wife did it to me when she mowed the grass and I critiqued her method. She's never touched the mower since. (sigh)

 

We took ours in for its 10k and they were already pushing the A/C Evaporator cleaning. They don’t look to see if it actually needs it. Went through this on my 2009. 200,000 miles never did it and A/C blew cold every day in the AZ heat. I got sick of it and asked to see a picture of the dirt, tech came back with well we can’t see it because it’s inside the dash and vent system. So how do you know it needs cleaning? Response was it’s just recommended based on miles.

 

Agree with both of this. We took it there for the freebee and they had us out in an hour so figured with us being super busy she could take her laptop and do some work. This trip also took 3 hours so was not happy about that too. I normally do this work myself but had a full day of work and then needed to drive two hours to do some work to get boat ready to put in water. At least I was doing that work myself as that would have costs thousands

 

Sorry to hear, but yes,the dealership saw your wife and and opened up the playbook, and she followed just as they hoped.