General dealer questions.

Hello, I am a mechanic/techniation at a Ford dealer and have seen many complaints, confusion, and questions for why the dealer does what they do.
I thought it might be nice to have a thread where people can post questions and be answered by myself and other techs who have to deal with y'alls complaints.

Please note I cannot answer Toyota specific questions as I work at Ford but will help as best I can do, I do have access to Professional Alldata and can get some specs for Toyota from that.

 

Biggest complaints that I have seen on here are:
A - Why replace when dealers could rebuild parts - such as alternators/starters/calipersect.
B - Why does the dealer recommend so much that I dont want done/dont consider a problem.
C - Why does OEM parts cost so much/why wont they use aftermarket/why cant I supply my own parts.
D - Why wont they listen to my complaint about a intermediate problem, especially when under warranty.
E - Dealer broke something, why wont they fix it or dealer broke something I expect something extra.
F - I like watching my car be worked on/why cant I go into the shop.


Answers:
At my dealer labor rate is $130/hr I believe so that will be used for figuring cost comparison.
A - Basically we do not rebuilt parts because of a few reasons. Biggest thing is cost, if the OEM part costs $200 and the rebuild kit is only $30 but it will take 1 billed hour to rebuild on top of the R&I labor, then the cost to rebuild to the customer is $160, so it is cheaper but not by much and what if a part of lets say a brake caliper is broken that is not rebuilable, say I find a crack in the piston, well now we have to source that part if possible and keep your car longer. What if I rebuild said caliper but then something unrelated to the rebuild breaks 10K down the road, no warranty so your screwed. If makes sense if you are doing it yourself as labor is free but at $130/hr I want a real warranty. Second biggest is that if OEM is out of your budget most stuff we can get from autozone/oreilly for a good bit cheaper. It doesnt carry the same warranty that OEM does but its not usually a problem. I DO NOT WANT A COME BACK, I would rather install a OEM part and know that its good as new then rebuild a part with 150K miles on it that may come back and I have to fix for free.

B - When your car comes in the ticket has a inspection and we have to fill it out, when I put a check next to the box that says I checked your battery and it passed the load test, I am saying you dont need a new battery. Customer comes back later and says that we said the battery was good when it wasnt and now we have to give them a free battery, is this legal, probably not but its a customer is always right/keep the customer happy no matter what world. Safety wise, when your tires are at 3/32 I recommend new tires, you can go further but if I dont recommend tires and its raining then you lose traction and wreck killing three people well that wouldnt have happened had you had new tires and now I am being sued, so I recommend tires when they are at 3/32. Same for a tire repair, if the puncture is not near the sidewall, approx 1 inch from sidewall, I will gladly patch it, but if its in that 1 inch next to the sidewall I will not patch it and will sell you a new tire since some tire company has said that it is not ok to patch a tire near the sidewall and your tire blows out and five people die, now same as with tires at 3/32, your family could sue me/dealer. Basically people dont up inspect/keep-up their vehicles anymore and if I miss something that causes bodily harm I could be held responsible so I will err on the side of caution.
For non safety recs such as we noticed a oil leak and you say ohh thats just a small leak Im not gonna worry about it, well if I dont mention it then you could come back and raise holy hell that we did not do our job inspecting the vehicle and we should fix this for free or worse you come back and say that wasnt like that before and we are the ones who broke it.
For example I had a SUV that I changed oil/rotated tires once twice that had a damaged wheel stud, I noticed both times recommended a new stud and lug nut. Both times customer declined and both times declined needed tires. They come back 2 months later with brand new tires installed somewhere else claiming that we are the ones who damaged the stud and we have to replace it for free, since I recommend/documented the problem before they lost that battle quickly and they paid for us to replace said stud.
Comes down to we dont want to be blamed for not noticing that something is bad even if its just a little so I recommend things that I wouldnt worry about as much on my personal vehicle, if you want you can ask if you can see the problem and talk to the mechanic, I will tell you what priority I would fix things in but I wont put it in writing because I dont want it used against me in court possibly.

C - OEM parts cost a lot of money and its a pain in the ass. Yes parts marks the price up over what they pay the manufacture, but there are ten people in parts and the money to pay them has to come from somehow, order the shit online and its cheaper but if its the wrong part thats on you but if they do it then its on them, hopefully they are experience and don't order the wrong part. Other big thing at least for Ford parts, I assume Toyota is similar. If you go to the Ford dealer and have them install a OEM brake caliper and it locked up a month later and needs to be replaced, well Ford will pay the mechanic to replace that part, Ford will pay for the new brake fluid needed to bleed the new caliper, Ford will pay for everything needed since you already paid once and not a single fucking cent should you have to pay, now it I replaced your left front caliper and then later your right front goes bad to, thats a different part and its on the customer. For aftermarket parts, they will replace the part often within a certain timeframe usually less then OEM timeframe(Ford is two years) but damn it they are paying for the labor of replacing that part, they are not paying for the new brake fluid, they will only be paying for the new caliper, so the dealer is on the hook for the rest of the parts and any labor owed the mechanic. Now when we say you need this $500 part and you find one online for $200, you can give it to me and I will happy change you the same labor to install it, but there is no fucking warranty, if I install it and 2 weeks later it craps the bed then you are the one paying for labor and the new part again. For example I installed a customer supplied no name brand alternator since they swore up and down that was what they wanted, well the voltage monitoring circuits in said alternator that keep turn the dash battery light off were bad, so the ECU thought the alternator was bad. So now customer had to order another alternator, pay labor again to replace it a second time then deal with returning the defected alternator.
Basically as a Ford dealer if a part is bad and its under the warranty time I can replace it and be paid labor easily. It is harder and more time consuming to do this with the aftermarket parts.

D - Complaints, especially intermittent ones but worse are when we cannot duplicate the damn problem. I am more then happy to look at your car and look for the problem but if I cannot duplicate it I can say based on your description from my experience I think its likely to be this but damn it I wont know the problems solved if I never saw the problem myself. How am I to know that the rear view camera that only screws up once a month is fixed when I only have the car for 2 days and it doesn't act up on me a single time. I can understand why when your car is still under warranty your mad since I wont fix it but I cant just throw parts at a car till its fixed, how would you feel when I keep needing another part and another part and more labor for the same problem when you are paying.
All I can say for this is that I am sorry I am trying my best but if the fault/noise/whatever it is wont happen for me when its broken I wont know if I fixed it after replacing those parts. Also under warranty I am not paid shit for diagnosing and am not paid for driving the car for 20 miles that it has to drive before it breaks down. If you want me to screw with your car and try to get it to act up for an hour then you need to pay me since thats an hour I could otherwise be spending making money.

E - The dealer broke something, sorry but the only people who never ever brake shit are the ones who dont touch shit and I will work on over ten cars a day so when I break something twice a month its just part of life, I swear I really did not mean to break the trim panel or scratch your paint or whatever. The dealer should defiantly pay for that shit, however see the example I gave for B, people blame us for shit all the time so we take customer complaints of stuff we broke with a giant cup of salt. Sometimes we are removing a part but someone else broke it and tried to glue it back together and we had to take it apart to replace X part, now we are blamed for breaking it even though had it not been broken previously I probably wouldn't have broke it. Unfortunately different dealers handle broken parts differently and some will not replace something they clearly broke.
My best advise is to be polite and talk to the service manager, they control the purse strings of the service department and have to approve paying for the new part. Some people on this forum like to say they are going to get a lawyer involved over a $200 part that broke, that shit may work or even the threat of a lawyer will work but you will be remembered and dislike by the mechanics, the service advisor, and the manager. When we break something the advisors and manger are expecting a shit show from the customer and everyone will be far happier and remember you fondly when you are calm and not unreasonable, no I will not dismantle a brand new car to give you this part right here right now, its gonna have to wait a day or two till the order arrives.
For example I damage 2 limited edition mustang rims in under 15 minutes, we paid $1200 per rim for two new rims for the customer, the whole shop learned there is a special tool for changing tires on these rims that day. The guy whos mustang rims I damaged reacted great, he was annoyed but understood that shit happens and that we ordered new rims and would call him as soon as they arrived. He has since been back multiple times for service and I have taken care of him and dont mind doing quick stuff for free. That said I have one customer who demanded I be fired since I did not install his childs seat after having to remove it, company policy is customer has to install child seats so we cant be blamed if they are installed wrong. I hope never to see that asshole with the child seat again, but I dont mind doing extra shit for free for the guy with the mustang rims I broke, he is a good customer.
I will say it does helps if you are a repeat customer, if you only come in one time with your barely running car, with 4 bald tires, metal to metal brakes, and declined everything but the one complaint you had we are less likely to believe you saying we broke something since everything else on your car is already broken and we have never seen your shit mobile before.

F - I understand that you want to keep an eye on your car while its getting a oil change, shit does happen and we left the wheel loose, we didnt put enough oil in the engine, we left the oil filter loose. Its fine to come in the shop with your service advisor since you want to see the brake pads or the oil leak but you do not get to stay without the advisor because simply put the shop is fucking dangerous and we dont need a useless human walking around and fucking something up or slipping in that oil puddle and suing us. Unless you are get along well with the mechanic you will not be allowed in the shop for any extended period of time, maybe your dealer has windows so you can see the oil change guys and you stand there staring down he guy who's changing your oil, we know you are there and we will be extra careful however due to trying to be as careful as possible since we see you watching we may screw something up since we are nervous, usually when I screw something basic up its when my boss is watching me do it and I get more concerned about being watched then doing the job I have done a thousand time. Honestly its just annoying knowing someone is watching you and waiting for you to mess up, we have one customer who is really really bad about this and when his truck comes in it gets put on the lift farthest away from where the customer can see just to spite him.
We say your not allowed in the shop because of insurance since it usually ends the conversation but it is true, in the shop if a car falls off the lift and onto one of us, the dealer has shop insurance that will take care of everything, when you wander in and no one knows your there you are an unauthorized person who the insurance will not pay for since there is no reason for you to be in said shop without a escort to keep you out of trouble. Do not fucking walk around to the other end of the shop where we park the cars and watch from there, it still counts as the shop. If you want to be allowed in the shop in an unofficial capacity be nice to the mechanics, we can and will tell the service advisors to fuck off and leave you alone, its fine to ask how something works but dont expect us to explain every little thing to you, if we tell you to sit down and shut up then do so since we are busy concentrating on fixing your car, do not try to help and tighten bolts down we have a order we go in and this can screw that up. Lastly please dont fucking act like you know better then us how to fix your car, otherwise we will tell you to go fix it your fucking self.