It is sure nice to have a dealer ya like!

What a change for me having had a local Honda dealer I disliked and then a Nissan dealer that was ok, not great, but it then left town so it became a 70 mile round trip for service. That was fun, getting friends or family to drop off or pick up.

Santa Cruz Toyota has been great. I dropped off my 23' Off Road for its 5,000 service today. The service person said since it's been a year let's up the service to the 10,000 mile service, it includes an oil change and there is no charge for the service. Then she set my shuttle up for the ride home. A few hours later I was texted it was done and she had the shuttle driver scheduled to pick me up. When we finished up the paper work at the dealership she suggested I make sure to get my truck in for the next service before February 26' because the services are only free for two years.

None of it is a big deal, but it sure is nice having a pleasant experience getting a vehicle serviced in a nice clean facility with nobody trying to upsell me anything.

 

The first two oil changes are free. All they did was make you burn an oil change early so that you have to pay for maintenance sooner.

 

That’s only good for 2 years though, no?

 

Wrong. She made sure I knew to get my truck in prior to the 2 yrs so the service would be free if I waited past two yrs it would not be free.

 

Yup, better than nut'n

 

It's all great until the warranty is over. Then it starts...

This is when it's best to find a good reputable garage that only replaces what's needed. They will have less overhead/hourly rate than the dealership.

 

My dealer experience started strong then just got worse and worse with shotty work so I ended up blacklisting them. Shame when you used to work there and the service was great at the time

 

Yup. I got that covered. I have a local shop owned by a family friend, our daughters grew up together and are best friends. The daughter's husband is now a part owner. They have done great work for me and always give me a big cost reduction.

 

That's what I would expect the service department to do it's not like they do any of that for free. Most dealers advertise those perks to get the sale to begin with. I don't think working in the service department is easy I wouldn't want to deal with the customers. It's great when it all works out. Every service department I have seen has always looked like there was more work than employees to handle it. I used to drive in circles at the ford dealer looking for a spot to drop what ever it was I towed in.

 

The Toyota dealer in Winston Salem NC sucks - even one of their Techs who was grabbing lunch at Sheetz agreed. I avoid dealers.The only exception is Flow Subaru in Winston Salem they are excellent, problem is everyone likes them and it is almost impossible to get an appointment in less that two weeks. There have been a few times they could have ripped my wife off but didn't . . . she wouldn't know. Several times (bought her Outback in 2018) she took it in for what seemed might be a major repair and it turned out minor. They even replaced the fob batteries for free last year. And they always run it through the car wash before you pick it up. Where we used to live (Durham NC) the Honda dealer was probably the worst dealership I ever encountered. I was having trouble reprogramming TPMS for new wheels and tires I had gotten from TireRack for a CR-Z. I went over to the Honda dealer and they charged me $108 to reprogram them. Later a the manager of the shop I used to go to told I should have came over to his shop and he would have done it for free - evidently it is a pretty simple procedure like letting all the air out of the tire and reinflating it or some such thing.