Dealer's scamming Toyota? Can they?
 

Ok, so please refrain from from hate or distasteful comments, please lol Least for the first 50 posts.

My friend took her BRZ into Toyota dealer (bought from Toyota dealer pre-owned) with a few issues of oil leaks.

Bought 2014: Blue, 23k miles, 2013 model, 6spd manual.
Took to dealer: 56k miles

So her two worries are:

• Car has heavy knocking like a diesel engine rumble
• CEL will turn on every 30-40min of driving
• RPM's fluctuate from 1.5k to 2.8k by themselves every now and then

I have my old gopro stuck on her dash real low and she has a mat covering 2/3 of the gopro. She uses it as a dash cam.

Anyway, it was left on and it recorded the dealer taking the car in, running the computer check, then parking. She waited over 6-8hrs on this. They never even test drove it. They said everything was fine.

So, when they take a csr like this in under warranty doesnt Toyota pay for their time/repairs?

Sorryh rough writing on break

So what is the problem? Did they fix it or no ?

Could they have done an ECU flash?
Could be all that was needed.
Was the car tuned at any point?

I think she is asking if they are stealing time essentially by taking a car in for 6hrs worth of work but only providing a few minutes of labor. It would be impossible to know what they billed it as unless you worked there though.

I work for a dealership it is normal to keep cars all day as there are many things from the day before and other customers that are also being worked on. appointments are not like at the doctors they are just check in times. It is possible they just scanned the car for codes found none and don't want to look into it any further. If they can not find a code it is much harder to get paid from the brand (Toyota in this case) to do further diagnostics. However if they do find an issue after a test drive and tear down then and only then do they get paid diag. (if there was an issue) Maybe it is not worth the risk for them for look further into the issue until you can have the code stay stored.

I think the better question that the OP should find out is how much time the dealership charged. If they claim 6-8 hours of work, I don't care which way they slice it, it does not seem right if all they did was hook it up for diagnostic and left it. So the OP needs to get a copy of the work order and see what was done.

Like others said did they fix it and charged the correct labor time? If so I see no problem.
If it wasn't fixed and they still charged for 6 hrs of labor then their is a problem.

We'll just wait to see what he reports back.

And just to help with the long wait, not every car will take exactly 30min to 1 hour to fix. Some idiot might come in for an oil change and the mechanic would find the car on the verge of death. Or someone might come in for a flat tire, but need a new axle. Shit like that eats up time.

All of a sudden everybody is worried about what Subaru was charged for warranty work?
They do not charge Subaru an hourly rate. There is a set rate for whatever warranty work is done and it is way less than they would charge you. If they did a scan and flash then they will get paid for a scan and flash not 6 hours.

That is very true. If they said the repair took that long OP better call BS but if they only spent the .3 (how they measure time at a dealership so .3 = 18 minutes of diag time they can get paid for if there is no issue found. at least thats how general motors is)

LOL some of you guys are funny.


She's not sending me a copy of the work order/receipt but as I recall, it did not have ecu reflash on it.

It said something along the lines:

"client/customer claims X issue and X under etc... circumstance."

Tech response: "Nothing found. X sound found normal. Oil seems to be spill caused by oil change. Smell caused by engine cleaning products and found to be normal."

She was just on phone with one of the main people at dealership so she wasnt answering. She says the person Tim(?) asked her to bring in video so they can provide better and quicker customer service in 2 days (TH). Will update then.

So was it fixed? You totally forgot to answer that.