New owner with serious repair cost concerns for the future

Please explain why your pleasant experience with the Toyota dealerships is so much more relevant than those of the other posters here, in particular the two who had to pay a ridiculous $250 for a diagnosis.

 

^^ relevant to your insinuation that a $250 diagnostic fee is common, typical, and unavoidable when clearly this is not the case.

 

Because I avoid dealers that have apparently bad service department reputations. And also because of the quote below:

How many people will come on here to complain about paying nothing for diagnosis or being charged only for 1/2 hour of labor for a repair attempt on an intermittent out of warranty problem (as mine were)?

 

It's not that tough. It starts like this:
Are you going to charge me for diagnostics if I have the work done here?
I'm sure I dont have to spell out the rest of the process

 

Well............... yeah. Duh. I've had two cars which gave no starts/died on the road. One was a 13 year old ford escort, and the exhaust back box came loose while drving and began dragging. i pulled off the road and as i came to a stop the tail pipe pierced the rear bumper and wedged itself in. There was no reason to take that to a ford garage, the nearest place that sold exhausts would do.

The other was a 12 month old GM vauxhall vectra, on which both the high pressure fuel pump and fuel regulator failed. this was still under warranty so went to the dealer, if it had not been under warranty it would have gone to my normal local garage, since anyone can replace a fuel pump.

My wife had to be recovered once, someone jumped up on her bonnet and kicked the windscreen, making it impossible to see out. Not much point taking her mondeo to a ford garage, since autoglass etc will come to your house.

Seriously Tpfun, once you're old enough to drive you'll start finding out these things about the real world.

 

But that means you are agreeing to fixing the car there, before knowing what needs to be fixed and how much they will charge you.

 

Couple of other hits show $250 and above .. looks like there are multiple levels of diagnostic procedures.

The posters I quoted had brake, suspension type issues.

 

Are you still sure about that?

 

To the OP:

Most of the hybrid components of the car are warranted for 8 years or 100 K miles. The powertrain warranty itself is 6yr/60K miles. Regardless of what the warranty says I would be very surprised if you were charged anything for diagnostics.

Also if you read the posts on this forum for the older models, there are several with well over 100K miles on them without having costly repairs done.

If you are concerned about high potential repair costs you can buy an extended warranty covering everything except normal maintenance items to 100K miles for about 1100. from warrantyshack.com who advertises on this site.

 

Remarkable aint it?
I could explain it to him but I cant comprehend it for him

 

spam

 

Not so much paranoid, okay maybe I am, but we have AAA because of the Honda CR-V. AAA was purchased 2008 for a LONG road trip on an out-of-warranty car. It just made sense.

Regarding some issues about taking things to dealerships, I found places where I live do a poor job at brakes. A national shop did a brake job on the CR-V and in less than a year, I had to have the roters (sp) replaced. It seems the pads were too hard and ate them for lunch. Pads were in great shape, roters were shot.

If one has a good private party repair shop, that is great. Where we are at now, I just go to the dealer though I know I'm spending more on repairs. And the diagnostics are refunded/applied if the repair is made at that time.