Peruzzi dealership service strategy Hatfield, PA

No, it's the dealer management doing this. I've experienced the same thing.

A litany of lies is SOP. I liked the one from Toyota Sunnyvale about how no tire manufacturer has a treadwear warranty anymore (as they were trying to sell me very expensive tires). Amusingly, when I went to buy tires at Costco, I ran into a woman who had received the same tire hard sell from the same dealer.

That time, I just left without even the service I came in to get. It became clear that it was going to be very difficult to just get the oil change with the coupon they sent out.

We're done with Hondas. Too many design flaws that Honda acknowledges then refuses to do anything about.

Toyota does welcome complaints and the dealers are unhappy when a lot of complaints are made because it affects some sort of bonus they get for a low rate of complaints. But you'll probably get the standard answer that each dealer is an independent company.

repair total toward $1,000.00?

that magic dollar amount. Thursday I got the old Pep Boys spiel from the " service Manager". He assumed I knew nothing about cars so I caught him in about 10 lies. One scam is the card that he puts a drop of fluid on and TH AT tells him what maintenance to request/require.

I think it is a borderline lemon. This is the last Toyota we will own.

it in this scam.

SMS - Thanks. I'm retired now and although I thought I had a good plan, it isn't the same as getting a regular paycheck and making decent money with a job. The middle class trappings and expenses have to be let go, or else. What surprised me was how much of a drain on money a house is. It is con stant repairs, appliance replacements, painting, staining, sealing maintena nce, and inside house cleaning. I'm cleaning out as much accumulated usele ss stuff to be able to move to a condo or very small house. I know will ne ed dynamite to get my wife out of here. I don't get women and big houses.

Funny, Internet is big but I go to the same dealership to service my Prius. Haven't noticed anything close to what you are describing but, honestly, have you been to ANY car dealership that did not try to upsell you on at least *some* service, some of them dubious kind? They do keep telling me I need an "injector cleaning" (80K 5 y.o. 2nd gen Prius) every time I come in for an oil change, I just say "no" - noone makes me feel stupid or anything like that, I just accept that they have to make sales quotas and they accept that this is my car and I can do whatever I want with it.

That said, I do have some issues with them (see my posts in the Prius group) and might eventually go to Thompson in Doylestown instead. They are almost guaranteed to be more expensive tho, besides, I've been a customer of Peruzzi for almost 10 yrs now, I go there sometimes more out of habit than anything else. Did you try a different dealership? They are not the only Toyota dealership in the area, you know.

I'm going to go over to Thompson Toyota and talk to the service manager. B ack to Peruzzi - They wanted to charge me $33.00 to clean the battery conne ctors. I asked, why that much to just wire brush the terminals & connector s? His answer - 'We have to charge the battery.' I guess he thinks I don' t know what an alternator is. I got the same spiel about the fuel injection cleaning. It HAS to be done with pressure. Today's gasoline has cleaners added, and I can always put in a can of Gumout fuel injector cleaning. An d the powersteering fluid HAS to be changed, right now.

All service items HAVE to be done now or my car will die.

I just did not appreciate being talked down to. It's amazing how some peop le get to be "managers".

Ed

I think that if I ran a service department I'd have a minimum $30 charge just to bring the car in, and then not gouge for little stuff like cleaning battery terminals.

By the time you add up the time to write up a service order, drive the vehicle into the service bay, take up a bay for 15 minutes to perform the work, however trivial, take the car out of the service area, and collect the money, it would not be worth performing any service for less than $30.

I recently purchased the end cap for the luggage carrier rails for my

4Runner. The dealer no longer stocks it so I got it at a junkyard. My neighbor was there and called me to ask if I still wanted it because it was $25. That was the junkyard's minimum charge to bother to go out and take a piece off of a vehicle. So I paid the $25.

What I hate is the fake services that a dealer comes up with, like the Bilstein Wallet Flush (named by Click and Clack, not me). If they try to push that then I'm very wary of the whole service department and even the whole dealership.

I also thought that the $33 charge was in essence a "rent" of the shop floor space just to bring the car in. The difficulty of the battery terminal cleaning and whether they did any charging - which is a strong suspect 'cause they would want to push the car out ASAP, no time to charge - had nothing to do with the $33 they were asking.

Easy -- sales/upmarket success.