Dealership rant.

Last week I took my '08 Tacoma trd sport 4x4 into Riverhead Toyota in NY for it's 60k service. Along with the big 60k service, I had the cabin filter changed, the transmission serviced and a throttle body service done.
There's also been a linkage type noise coming from the front end when breaking at low speeds.

I live an hour and half from the dealership (riverhead is the closest one) so I put a full tank of gas in it before I dropped it off.

5 hours and $580 later, I was on my way back home when I noticed a loss of power and severe vibrations at 1500-2k rpms.

I turned around and drove 20 minutes back to the dealership stating the problems. An hour later, they come out saying that they can't figure it out and are holding a water bottle filled with gasoline. They said the gas in the truck is "bad" and to burn through a 1/2 tank of gas, fill in with premium and the problem will go away. After 15 years of driving, I've never filled a car with "bad gas." A little odd after having new plugs and a trotter
Body service, but I went with it and left.

I put gas dry in the tank, octane booster and a half tank of premium over the weekend. Nothing. Still running like total shit.

I called the dealership this morning and spoke to the service manager about what was going on. He had remembered the vehicle and said he would call me right back. Fast forward to 5:30pm. No call back.
So, I call back. Very annoyed this time I demanded to speak to whoever the service manager's boss.

I'm going in tomorrow morning, they'll have a loaner ready for me and will fix the problem.

Anyone have this kind of situation happen to them?
Advise?

Thanks for listening.

 

sounds fishy id wait at the shop and tell them to show you everything they find wrong. id want to look at scan pages teardowns etc.

 

Ontop of all that, they fixed the "linkage noise" by cutting off a heat shield. The noise is still there, and a heat shield was cut off my truck for no reason.
Oh, and I found a socket that was rattling around in the engine compartment.

 

Join the club, I just got ripped on Transmission fluid change. Paid for change and got nothing. They probably sold my fluid on ebay

 

My dealership did an oil change and left a catch-cup full of oil leaning on my alternator, they called after I left and asked me to come back right away but wouldn't state why. Eventually they told me that they left a tool under my hood, I pulled into a parking lot to check it out and found this. There is more history, the oil change before this one, the tech broke my dipstick off. The dealership had refused to accept any responsibility for their techs, kinda shady in my opinion. Now my airbag light has been on for awhile and I don't want them to touch my truck ever again, gotta drive 300 miles to the next dealer.

 

I change all my own fluids, no one cares about your truck as much as you do, lots of the "professional" mechanics Ive dealt with I wouldn't trust with much. Ive found a few good ones though, but back when I had my jeep and lifetime rotation/alignment from Firestone they would always try to get me to do the dumbest stuff.

After one of the alignments the tech said "the steering wheel is off a little now but you cant adjust that on jeeps" I didnt even want to bother explaining it to him, took it home, 10min later its adjusted.

 

The reason for the rough low RPM ride could have been from the throttle body cleaning. They should have had you unplug the battery for 20 minutes and let the ECU reset itself (unless they messed up something in the throttle body).

 

That's why it's better to skip all of those BS 15k, 30k, etc... dealer services. They cause more problems than they prevent. I have owned 4 new cars and never had any dealer maintenance service done. And they still run good.

 

I'm afraid some of those FU--ER GM techs that lost their jobs during the GM ripoff are infiltrating the Toyota dealerships and starting this sh-t over here now. What a shame.

Honestly, the less my truck is at the dealer, the better and I haven't been back once since I bought the truck and hope to keep it that way. I'll figure out my own "service" schedule, without their "help", thanks.

 

OP you must be in Montauk. Otherwise id say you drove past a lot of toyota dealers to get to Riverhead. I'm in Greenport so if I'm going to the dealer that's the closest one to me too. I've got to say its hit or miss at best over there. Be ware of the service manager, hes a salesman in disguise and last I saw he drove a dodge! Good luck, that's all I got.

 

Yes, good call. I'm in Montauk.
Heard from the dealer today. Three days later. Cracked, defective spark plug.

But really... who knows?

We'll see tomorrow when I go pick it up.

 

Id buy that but it could have been loose too that has happened to me before. Or Maybe the gap was way off.

Glad you got it working right.

See you in mtk I'm out there often for work.