Beware of Dealer Oil Change
 

So, this is not about my 5th Gen T4R, but my wife's Tundra. I do my own oil changes, but she likes to have the dealer perform this maintenance task (maybe she doesn't trust me...). I had to use her truck to tow a skid steer for some landscaping work. When I was unhooking the trailer I noticed a small puddle of oil under her truck. She had just had the oil changed. We called the dealer and they had her bring it right down. It ended up being a cracked filter housing, which they said was caused by over tightening the bolt. They fixed it for free (which I wouldn't accept anything less) and when she came back she said they didn't give her any paperwork. Hmmm, wonder why? They messed up and don't want any "record" of their screw up. I suppose it is not surprising. Buyer beware!

Hasn't anything to do with an oil change, but I had a dealer do a dirty to me. I took my vehicle to our local dealer (no longer in business) for regular maintenance which included oil and filter change and scheduled tire rotation. This was a necessary warranty thing. Why I thought of it I don't know, but what I did was take a whiteout pen and put a dot on the front tires only. I knew they should have been on the rear after the work was done. Upon completion of the work I looked for the dots and they were still right where I put them. You should have seen the look on the service managers face when I told him what just happened. That was the last time that dealer ever saw me. Long story short, try to do something like this to ……..ugh...… keep them honest.

I'm completely on-board with what you did... but it's sad that we even have to put in covert crosschecks to make sure we are not being taken advantage of.

At the bare minimum, I check my own oil color and level, before and after service if I decide not to change it myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how awful most dealership service departments are at performing any type of task, but especially routine maintenance. I recently took mine in for the initial 5000 mile Toyotacare service. It took them 3 hours to rotate the tires. For some reason they aired up 3 of the 4 tires to 40 psi, but left 1 tire at 34 psi which is what I had them all set to when I brought it in. I won't be back.

Once had a local shop misdiagnose a timing belt replacement which turned out to be a noisy lifter, got a bill for the timing belt zero'ed out. Good guys and honest owner... All for the shop local...

I too have a local independent mechanic and they do a lot more for me than the dealer in terms of earning my business.

Totally agree with the local shops reliability. I too have one here I go to all the time and they always do a killer job for me, and I don't have to mortgage the house in the process.