Most annoying thing for me was getting a number of things done at 120k miles, and ending up with 11 hours charged in one day. The other really annoying thing was being told I didn't need brakes, then going on a 600 mile trip with the Scouts, and coming home to find that the new grinding noise was due to not having any pads, and the calipers being used to stop the car. That was the right rear. The service guy did make it good, replaced all the parts for free on the right rear, and gave me a 20% discount on the standard brake job price. I did recommend that he go back in the service area and slap the tech that said I didn't need brakes when I went in before the trip.
I mean... that's not just Toyota. A lot of brands have been going with "Long-Life" fluids and stretching the service intervals to make their vehicles look better up-front for maintenance costs. But at some point you do have to do all that maintenance and for most brands you have big services around 60k and 100k/120k. With the new direct injected Toyotas, they recommend the iridium plugs be replaced every 60k which is a "downgrade" from the usual 120k they were before (though weirdly enough NGK/Denso for their non-factory plugs barely recommends 60k... was something we were talking about in a thread in the 4th gen section).
As for the brake pad thing... Man, I wish we could just train lube guys (the turnaround for them is so damn high you barely get to learn their names sometimes) to be accurate with brake pad measurements and to change our multi-point system to
stop forcing brake pad service recommendations at 50%. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to call the service writer to have them double check with the customer if they want their brakes serviced at 6mm or 5mm (fronts usually start about 12mm, rears usually start about 10mm for brake pads). It just irks me because I won't give a "Yellow" recommendation until about 4mm (Toyota specifies about 2-3mm as "Needs to be replaced now") and that is usually followed with a "brakes getting close to replacement spec, recommend attention
soon. Then of course you get the upsells from lube bay where every now and then you're like, "who the hell did the inspection on this car? You wrote GREEN 8mm on the fronts!? They're rubbing the damn wear indicator and you can see the pads are unevenly worn!:mad2:" Which totally doesn't make us look like idiots when we have to call the customer back to correct our mistake and then ask them to spend money and leave their car longer with us.
So yeah, I would be absolutely pissed if that happened to me because someone couldn't use a damn gauge properly. Glad they did right by you in the end though. While it upsets me when a product doesn't work out of the box or if a company messes up; I do maintain that I will give them the opportunity to make it right and let them earn my loyalty as a customer.
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[MENTION=699679]Pavement Tested[/MENTION]
You're fine, I got where you were coming from. I was just stating my opinion and airing my grievances a little is all. It's a shame but because of the cyclical nature of the stereotypes it also affects how a lot of mechanics/technicians/grease monkies/wrench bangers/etc. (I prefer magician or wizard, but tech or mechanic will do most times

) deal with customers, particular the "Forum guys." I know plenty of good mechanics who have had such a horrible time with people who get their information from forums that the moment they hear "I read/saw on the internet" they just shut down and go to a default "uh-huh... yeah... uh-huh" mode which only makes the customer feel unheard and justified that the dealership is looking to scam them. Like I said, it's just this sort of cyclical nature of things that keeps this cat/dog fight going... one of the reasons I joined the forum was to see for myself how bad it was and when I saw that a lot of things just came down to poor information/misinformation/communication of information I just started posting stuff to help people out and educate them.
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Oh! I totally forgot my own recent (well, my dad's technically) piss poor Dealership encounter. He was having issues with his '19 Infiniti QX80 when he was up here earlier in the year; some weird stuff going on with his infotainment unit (by the way... Nissan/Infiniti if you're listening? WTF is wrong with you guys? Why the hell did you design those things like that!?) so I suggested trying the local Nissan Dealership in town. We scheduled an appointment over the phone explained why he was coming in (to have the unit diagnosed and hopefully repaired) and checked with them if they could do that and if they would be able to liaison with Infiniti for the warranty side of things. Scheduling told him it should be fine, they do it all the time, and all he'd have to do was sign some paperwork when it came down to it.
So we wake up earlier on a work day (because he needed me to give him a ride back, they had no loaners) we go to the dealership, wait in line for a service writer and start getting the vehicle written up. While he's there dad figured, I need an oil change and alignment anyways; get to the end of the process about to authorize the repair order and the service writer is like, "alright that'll be $170 for the diagnosis." My dad and I are both like, "huh? I thought you guys said you didn't have to charge us and that you'd handle the warranty claim with Infiniti?"
(Now to be fair here before continuing, we work on Lexus vehicles a lot in our area; we do occasionally do warranty work, but for us the customer has to contact Lexus and get prior approval and then submit what we charge them for reimbursement. This is all the customer's responsibility and we will tell them that when they schedule the appointment and when they show up to check in,
NOT at the end of the process when they're about to authorize the repair order and have been led to believe they have no responsibility.)
Suddenly the writer changed tune and was like, "I mean our techs can look at the vehicle, but we can't cover anything under warranty because we're a Nissan dealer. We pointed out that we understood that, but were told over the phone that you guys handle the warranty claim so there wouldn't be need to pay and get reimbursed, we verified with the scheduling department when we made the appointment, specifically
because of that assurance. "Oh yeah, no... you have to go to Infiniti to get it covered, so we can have the vehicle done by end of day if you sign here." He didn't even bother to mention or direct my father to a support hotline or how to talk to Infiniti about reimbursement for warranty work; just assumed we would pay him and figure it out later...
Needless to say we were both cranky and just took the car and ended up scheduling with an Infiniti dealer 3hrs away and made a day trip of it on the weekend. It was a small thing and a long-shot (like I said, we both were aware that the Nissan Dealer would most likely not warranty work on an Infiniti without issue; but they insisted on the phone they did it all the time) and to have to wake up that damn early, to get strung along was just infuriatingly bad customer service. They could have just told us on the phone to contact Infiniti first before scheduling so we wouldn't waste our time.