Last time for free dealer service

[cycleboy]

Had my FR-S in on Friday to the dealer for routine service. On previous cars, I would always have done this myself. Have only done it twice now on this car because it is free from Scion.

Well, my first disappointment was that I arrived at 9 for my svc appointment and there were like a dozen cars lined up ahead of me waiting to get checked in. Took a good 20 min for my "appointment" to even get started. They told me on the phone that they have a team for routine service, so it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, I'm hoping for pre-noon.

Next, the estimate for the service was to be done by "early afternoon". I took this to mean around 1pm. They said I would get a call. I called about 1:30 to ask for a guesstimate and after some waiting was told 2:30. Kind of a bummer as I'm 35 miles from home and nothing to do but sit around at my parents house. 3pm comes and no call. I tell my dad we might as well just go there. We get there and as I'm about to go ask, here comes my car in the driveway, apparently done w/ test drive. The advisor I had in the morning isn't even there anymore! So I got out a few minutes after, mildly irritated w/ the long time and the lack of a call about it being ready.

Today, the other shoe dropped. I jacked the car up and went underneath to install MTEC shifter springs and I find on the drivers side panels - starting from the metal one near the front, to the cardboard one covering the tranny, to the last one under the door area - there is oil dripping and streaked across all of the panels on the driver's side! I quickly checked the drain plug and luckily found it didn't seem to be leaking. I pulled off the cardboard panel for the spring install and it had oil on both sides. Checking other things underneath, I couldn't find evidence of a leak anywhere. I drove it a little bit to check the spring install and all seemed good. I will check tomorrow to verify there is no further oil down there and the level is good. My guess is that it got all over when they changed it and they didn't bother to clean it up.

I will not be getting my future "free" services and I will be mentioning all of the above in the survey they sent me.

[humfrz]

Originally Posted by cycleboy

Had my FR-S in on Friday to the dealer for routine service. ...........

Well, DANG, cycleboy, that is a bummer.....

I reckon either the dealership "overbooked" themselves or some employees didn't show up for work.

From my experience, an oil change at a dealership, shouldn't take longer than it takes to smoke two cigarettes, drink one cup of coffee, flirt with the receptionist for a couple of minutes, have at least one sales person ask if they can help me and read part of a car magazine ...... about an hour.

I'd go in and express my dissatisfaction to the manager and have the "spilled/leaking" oil noted.

Then I would never go back to that dealership.

I sure hope your smeared around oil was because of a spill .... and not a leak.

You did check the filter to be sure it wasn't leaking ... ??

humfrz

[subwaynm]

Sorry to hear that cycle boy . Hope that isn't a leak just poor workmanship. And I agree wouldn't be going back to that Dealership anymore. Hope that there is another near by.
Good luck

[N1rve]

That's really bad. How could they even make a mess on this car? It's so straight forward. It's not like the Tundra where you have to bend the skid plate and place a diverter to get the oil filter out. Or like a Sienna where the oil filter is mounted infront of the car and when you take it out, all the oil drips onto the car.

[cycleboy]

Going to poke around under the hood and underneath today to make sure I don't see more leaks or drips. The drips looked like brand new oil, so my hope is that they just missed the fill opening and spilled some.

I got the "how'd we do" email from the dealer and responded with my experience. There is another dealer nearby, but I have no experience w/ them (yet).

[frslee]

What would you expect from Toyota technicians...... all they do is change oil/brakes on corolla, camry, rav4, highlander.

[cycleboy]

Just finished spending ~2 hours under and around the car inspecting things and cleaning.

It got worse!

First, the cup that the filter sits in was about half full of used oil, far more than they would maybe use to put on the new filter gasket.

Next, I poked around the topside with some bright lights and found several puddles of new oil in the nooks and crannies of the engine. There were several areas where there were drips down the side of the engine bay. I soaked up what I could with paper towels, but some was impossible to reach. For that, I connected 2 drinking straws together and literally sucked the oil out (don't worry, I didn't ingest any).

Last, I wasn't going to worry about the skid plate, but I saw from the topside what looked like a puddle. I pulled it off and there were indeed 2 small puddles in the indentations on it.

I wiped everything down and got it all sparkly clean, then put it back together. Going to go drive around now and check oil level after that.

I took a bunch of pictures, will get them cleaned up and post a few.

[suaveflooder]

Exactly why my car has not gone in for a single one of it's "free maintenance" appointments. I do all the work myself.

[cycleboy]

and I always have in the past (but it wasn't free then) and will be in the future (because it turns out it isn't really "free" now either!).

[cycleboy]

Here are my photos from this morning. So far I haven't found anything that's really wrong (e.g. leaking, broken, and so on), but this is just shoddy work and not something I accept.

Dirty paper towels just from sucking up used oil out of the cup the filter sits in. I couldn't get a good picture of how much was in there, but it was maybe 1/8" deep all the way around the filter.


Fresh oil in a bolt head and pooled in a nook behind it.


Fresh oil pooled in another nook, or maybe this one's a cranny?


Oil puddled in a nook under the D4S plenum.


Paper towel used to suck up oil from just one of the nooks on top of the engine.


Skid plate after removal, with a finger swipe through one of the oil puddles showing how much was there. Not a ton, but zero is what there should be!


View from underneath looking up. Notice streaks coming down the bay at upper right. There were also some drips at lower left, but I couldn't get them because of the angle of the sun.


Final tally of the dirty towels used to clean it up, plus the drinking straws I used to suck the oil out of the nooks and crannies on top of the motor.


Nice clean skid plate after I scrubbed it!

[pche]

Looks like they forgot to put a new filter on it and started the car lol. Seen a guy do that on a BRZ, it looks like the Old Faithful!

I'd go back there and give them a chance to make it right. I'm sure if you demand and show the pictures you can get at least a free detail out of it.

[R.S-HawK]

Went to a dealership once, and never again.

Go complain to the service director at the dealership.

[jwSubMOA]

I hate dealer service! I have never had a good experience,ever. I took my 2013 ZL1 in at 1500 miles for its first oil change,OMG! The techs and service manager did not know the procedure for the service, could not agree on what engine was in the car and had no clue as to how much oil to fill the engine. After determining the amount of oil required they measured out 8 quarts,filled the engine and closed the hood. Had no intention of checking the dipstick or having me start the car. I had to ARGUE with the service manager to get them to check the oil level and top it off. After slamming the aluminum hood he takes a red shop rag coated in oil and dirt and scrubs fingerprints off the hood! He absolutely ruined the paint and did not care one bit. I sent them the bill for the $1200 detail and paint correction. Assholes.

[cycleboy]

Originally Posted by pche

Looks like they forgot to put a new filter on it and started the car lol. Seen a guy do that on a BRZ, it looks like the Old Faithful!

I'd go back there and give them a chance to make it right. I'm sure if you demand and show the pictures you can get at least a free detail out of it.

You sparked a thought with this and I remembered one time a shop left the filler cap off of my mom's Mazda and it geysered. I went to check this morning and there's nothing on the inside of the hood, so I don't think the filter was left totally off. My guess was either not tight enough or maybe there was old oil puddled there when they took the filter off (the one on there does look new at least!) and they didn't clean it up. Not sure if that's possible as I haven't taken it off myself to see how it drains.

I will NOT be taking it in to them for detailing! I suspect that the water spots that are all over the entire car since it was new were from them either letting sprinkler water dry on it or washing it when their RO system wasn't working. It's taken me a lot of time and effort to get most of the spots off of it!

I did respond to their "how'd we do" email with my thoughts (I wasn't rude, just honest) and will be also sending them the photos. So far the Svc Mgr has not replied.