Tacoma Cancer

Taco Cancer Update: Original selling dealership offered to remove hitch at no cost. After the removal they try to hit me with the Catch-22. With the tow assembly removed in order to reconnect my bumper I needed to pay them $365 for a pair of side brackets. (Brackets are $40-70 each online)The service manager never mentioned any brackets in the offer to remove my rusted hitch. I told them to put my hitch and bumper in the cargo bed and I left the STEALERSHIP with a lesson learned. (Stealerships are wolves in sheep's clothing). I went home, checked out YouTube videos, put in some work over a few days and restored the hitch to like new condition. See Pics.

 

Lesson 1 - Dealership (ie Toyota corp) cannot/will not use the 40$ brackets you found online due to legal exposure (as detemined by their big ass insurance department that is paranoid about getting sued if a trailer disconnects and ends up in someone's living room). They are legally stuck using their own / OEM parts.

Lesson 2 - accepting an offer for someone to wrench (spend time) on your vehicle for free and then act suprised when they (gasp) try to sell you something is naive to say the least

 

The online bracket that I would I used if I opted to eliminate the tow hitch would have been from a Toyo Dealer in Miami; as opposed to the $350 cost this dealer was trying to pitch my way.

 

2 brackets at 71 each (list price) is around 150 or so. He puts the 200$ in there to cover the techs labor time in the shop. If you came to me and wanted the hitch removed and you had your own brackets I'd charge 1 hrs labor. An hour's labor being around 135-145$ at a dealership, that makes the going rate for hitch removal around 300$ before tax. Whether you buy your own brackets first or pay for the whole job...

Shops have been doing this type of thing with "free inspection " or "free labor with purchase of.." for a while. Dealers are just as bad. Just not sure why you're suprised.

Glad you got it sorted out

 

I don’t get it. So you removed the hitch completely because it had some minor surface rust? What do you do when you need to tow something now?

Geez some people have too much time and too few real problems.

 

I thought he said that he painted it and put it back on just a few posts ago?

 

You’re right, he does say that near the end. Overall though it’s a lot of angst and effort over nothing.

 

This ^