General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just threatened the Toyota dealership where I bought my car. [View all]TheBlackAdder
(28,189 posts).
Your car will go in for an oil change and when you leave, it's not running right. Huh, it was earlier.
What a lot of dealers do is. . .
YOUR CAR IS UNDER WARRANTY
1) Two cars with like parts are at the dealership. Your car and another person's.
2) A car out of warranty will have a broken part, they will swap the part with your car's good part.
3) They will charge the other guy for a NEW part--full price and labor. No dealership cost.
4) You will leave and come back for warranty repair of that part. The dealer is paid labor.
YOUR CAR OUT OF WARRANTY: You now become the other guy, and if you ask for the old part back, they might come up with the excuse that it was just picked up by the scrap collector. If the dealership pushes back on that request, that's when you should be a little suspicious. Dealerships should have absolutely no problem returning your old part to you. The ECMs, TCMs and other computer modules are desired by the dealerships because they like to sell them to rebuilders for a lot of money, since most older cars these parts are only available as aftermarket rebuilds. You'll be charged $600-1K or more for a rebuilt ECM, and the dealer buys them for half of that. Then, they take your old part and sell it for $100-200 to the rebuilder.
These parts swaps occur mostly at dealerships because dozens of like cars are being serviced each day. Heck, they could even keep a few junk parts and rotate them from one customer to the next, perpetuating this scam over and over, requiring your car to be at the shop for a day or two for the part to come in.
Asking for the old parts is the best way to jam them, but another is to mark each of your main parts so you know you're getting your old part back or if they swapped it with someone else's part.
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