I had an experience this week that was almost too amazing to believe, I just have to share it. A customer was referred to me by a person who bought a gen 1 Prius from me. This person had taken her Gen 1 Prius (w/ 70K miles on it, a real creme puff) to a local Toyota dealer complaining of a coolant leak after it had been serviced to replace the inverter coolant pump. This dealer told her that she needed a new radiator and it would be $1,000 to replace it. We quoted her a used radiator, a new aftermarket radiator and a new OEM radiator. It would be her choice which one she wanted, if that was what she needed. When she showed up, we looked at her car and saw that the hose clamp that holds the upper radiator hose onto the thermostat housing was loose. We tightened it. (more accurately, we snapped it closed, it was in the 'latched open' position). We pressure tested the cooling system and road tested it. We flushed and filled the system (since she had been using the wrong coolant to top it up while she was saving up the money to get the car fixed) and we replaced the radiator cap for good measure. It appears the dealer loosened the clamp (intentional? Theres no need to touch this hose to do the inverter pump change) and then told her it was the radiator. Here's the kicker, She is a 70+ yr old woman who suffers from Parkinsons Disease! I am not making this up.... Eric
My Mom took her Highlander to a dealer on the Western Slope last November for an oil change. She had a brake/taillight bulb out also. The next morning, there was a small pool of oil on the ground because the drain plug was only finger tight. And the double-filament bulbs had been replace with single filament ones, so she had no taillights. As more hybrid shops come online, dealerships can go back to being the last resort for non-warranty repairs.
If the intent was to make the owner think the radiator was bad, I would think it would make more sense to loosen a radiator hose where it connects to the radiator. I take it though, that your inspection determined that the radiator was fine and that the only problem was the loose hose clamp near the thermostat housing? Not sure that this meets the standard of "shocking and egregious". That standard might be met if you found that someone at the dealer stuck a screwdriver into the radiator, making a hole in it...
If, as we suspect, they sabotaged the car of a 70+ yr old woman with a serious disability so they she would have to bring the car back and pay them more money for repairs that she didn't need, that is shocking and egregious by my standard. Eric
Question is, was is the dealer or the technician? Replacing the radiator, and the PITA hoses while you are at it, is a several hour job, no?
I was about to say the same thing. It could very likely be the technician looking for some juicy income. Techs make virtually no money on warranty repairs, so any out-of-warranty job pays good money. The dealership is going to take the word of the technician. In many cases the dealership is unaware of it, but in some cases they are and choose to look the other way since it makes them money too. Dealer techs are always looking for something else to fix on the car and if they can't find anything they might just make something up. An interesting irony here is that I've had many technicians tell me that if they are working on a car that is under warranty and they see something else wrong with the car that is not related to what they are working on, they will keep their mouth shut and will not mention it to anyone. Because if they mention it, then they have to fix it. Yes, they get paid a little for it, but not much. So they'd rather move on to the next car as quickly as possible so hopefully it will be a non-warranty repair job.
The posts in this thread emphasis one of the big problems with the current way technicians are paid. They no longer get paid for their actual work, but instead are paid a fixed fee based on the standard labor for a given repair. It tends to be a disincentive in many cases. Tom
So true. The faster they get it in and get it out, the more money they will make. Encourages them to cut corners. I have spoken to mechanics who have left large dealerships because management has actually encouraged them to cut corners. He refused.
