Pretty Sure The Car Dealership Is Ripping Me Off...

[Styx Fan]

Slang term for sure, but it is the term my friends at auto dealerships use.

Heaven help me for service writers who like to throw the company under the bus. They make situations so much worse. Some of them would like to always make the manufacturer the bad guy and the dealer the good guy. And thats fine to a point, but they should want to maintain for loyalty for both!

 

[tvguy]

Heaven help me for service writers who like to throw the company under the bus. They make situations so much worse. Some of them would like to always make the manufacturer the bad guy and the dealer the good guy. And thats fine to a point, but they should want to maintain for loyalty for both!

For me a local dealer who wants to be an advocate for me with the manufacturer is a huge plus. We have a couple of family run dealership groups here that have been around for decades. Their loyalty is with their customers, not the automaker because they plan to be around for decades more and hope to sell you whatever brand car they are selling currently. One started selling Oldsmobiles back in the 1970's. They currently sell Toyota Honda, Subaru Chevrolet, and Mazda. They dumped Nissan after all the transmission issues issues and very upset long term customers because Nissan was not stepping up to fix them. They also dumped Hyundai. And they were very briefly an Xchange Leasing dealer, the leasing arm of Uber. I have no idea what happened there, but that relationship only lasted a few months this year.
Another started with Packard, then shifted to VW and Porsche in 1955. Today they have Acura, Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Infiiniti, Land Rover, Jaguar, Maserati, Mini, Porsche Volkswagen and Volvo. They just dumped Fiat, 10 years ago dumped Nissan, and years back they dumped Lincoln and Mercury.

 

[1911]

auto repair is just like any other business,shops are free to charge what ever they want.If you don't like the price nobody is twisting your arm to have it done there. I always shop around on needed repairs before having them done.

 

[Judique]

auto repair is just like any other business,shops are free to charge what ever they want.If you don't like the price nobody is twisting your arm to have it done there. I always shop around on needed repairs before having them done.

It's great that you have the time to shop around on needed repairs.

 

[kymom99]

It's great that you have the time to shop around on needed repairs.

While I agree you can call around fairly easily to check prices, I still think dealers have an unfair advantage for lack of a better way to put it. I think a lot of people think going to the dealer gives them superior quality of service when that isn't necessarily true. I had a mazda that kept stalling. I took it to the dealer several times and they finally changed the fuel pump. The problem persisted. I mentioned that I paid for a fuel pump that I probably didn't need and their answer was well it was testing low. The finally found the problem which cost less than $200 to fix after all the headaches. The only plus I can think of is they gave me a loaner car each time even though the car was out of warranty. I continued to go to the dealer because they had the information from the previous visits. After that problem was fixed I never went back again. So my point is, they don't necessarily provide better quality of service. If you can find a better price at a reputable local guy, even if you have to wait to get in or whatever, it can be worth it to shop around.

 

[leebee]

We found our CarGuy. Yes, it's a pain to have to travel several towns over to his garage (which until last year was a one-man shop), it's further than AAA will tow so we have to pay for anything over 5 miles, he usually doesn't have loaners, and sometimes it takes awhile to get in for service (better now that he hired another guy besides himself), but he is straight with us and doesn't charge an arm and a leg. I always know what needs to be done, how much NOW and what can wait, and he's been terrific when it's been a situation that takes time to diagnose- he hasn't charged us for every hour of labor, instead a flat rate of about $100 for diagnosis, even though it took multiple visits to figure out what was wrong with the van a few year ago. ANYHOW... it is wonderful to find a CarGuy you can trust, and worth it, even with all the inconveniences!