I take my vehicles to the their specific dealers, the Toyotas to the Toyota dealer, the Honda Fit to the Honda dealer, the Ram Truck to the Dodge dealer, all in the hope that their technicians are trained to a level higher than one might find at a generic repair shop; alas it’s not to be…
The Midas Brake Shop forgot to put the master cylinder cover back on after refilling the master cylinder after a brake job.
A Toyota Dealer did not refill the radiator properly after a radiator flush and the car overheated on the way home…
A dodge dealer balanced the rotated the tires back onto their original locations.
Same Dodge dealer did a State Inspection and an Oil Change and it took over four hours (I knew would have to wait, but…) but the truck got a 23-mile “road test” for lunch (the seats, driver and passenger were both moved, the radio was on a station I did not listen to and there was fresh mud in the wheel wells.). I demanded and got a free oil change, State Inspection, and a tank of fuel (Diesel). Never went back to this dealer…
A Honda dealer did a state inspection, oil change and tire rotation. All four tires were missing the valve stem covers when it was returned.
And this really got my goat, last year when I had the state inspection on my 2019 Toyota Corolla. The windshield wipers failed, they had apparently tore ever so slightly after I had done a walk around the day before… But what to do, the wipers were torn, I could leave and buy them somewhere else and come back or I could just have them replace them and have done with it…
Well, below is a photo I took when I went outside to pick up my car. I do not know how this is even possible… Oh, I was steaming, I drove my car right back in, parked it right in their entrance, blocking the entrance completely and went looking for the General Manager (I took the key fob with me, I know the car would jam up any one else coming in for service… But I was pissed, I had just paid $40 for those wipers and they put two of the same size on, both 28". The driver’s side takes a 28" and the passenger side takes a 14".
Now, remember, it was the Licensed State Inspector’s who put those wipers on (not some car jockey hired to move cars…) and he just dropped the wiper blade onto the windshield and never noticed that it was hanging off the side of the car…
I told the GM (the service manager was now present, looking for the fob so he could move my car, but I was not giving it up yet…) I wanted an explanation, how a could a “licensed” state inspector do this, how could I trust anything he did?..
Their excuse was the Pandemic and that they had a hard time hiring qualified personnel… Bull………
Ultimately, the GM told the service manager to have the correct wipers installed and to refund the cost of the wipers… There is little wiggle room at this dealership, I already get state inspections, oil changes and tire rotations for life, they also guarantee the drivetrain for life…
This is the same dealership my wife bought her '85 Toyota Corolla from and they are still giving us free oil changes and state inspections. That’s almost 100 oil changes and 37 state inspections… They have also done some courtesy work knowing they are on the hook for that drivetrain that has over 230,000 miles on it…
So No, I do not trust a “technician” whose only job is probably changing tires with properly torqueing the lug nuts…