dashan

I was cleaning my glove box and found some estimates from a lexus dealer for the service when I brought the car in for inspection 4 years ago.

dashan

$668.61 for waterpump.

dashan

Timing belt: $512.20
Timing belt idler pulley: $479.93

dashan

Cam seal $286.84

dashan

Timing belt tensioner: $138.38
Crank seal: $413.13

dashan

Including other repair, total estimate: $4966.04.

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

if they tried to charge you that you'd have a pretty good case for misrepresentation.

80% of that work gets done at the SAME TIME, they're triple-quadruple charging you for labor.

tenchu

This.

As a mechanic by profession, I wish we got paid the labor time for each part, but if you have to take off a rotor, you don't get paid time to replace the pads. Same goes with a water pump, that tbelt has to come off anyways, you don't get extra time to put it back on

anarchyx34

The person who wrote that estimate likely doesn't know much about how to use the Reynolds and Reynolds (the billing system they're using) estimate making tool. He added each thing as a separate labor op, which inserts the labor time automatically for each thing as if it was the only thing that was going to be done. When I was a service advisor I would add everything with overlapping labor into one labor op and then use common sense to adjust the labor time. Maybe this guy was hoping you'd pay it.

RA40

iTrader: (6)

These are individual service estimates. The writer is clueless to the overall service. To think that there are off the street people being employed at this dealership. I'd be scared to think what the service tech background may be.

sdls

$4966? That's more than the car is worth. FYI I have a receipt for a t-belt job done in '02 on my '96 that came out to $2.3g although it included replacing a headlight for $300ish.

When I did the timing belt again recently, it cost me something like $50 using an AutoZone timing belt (made in Italy!) and Toyota crank and cam seals. I didn't touch the tensioner, idlers or water pump.

deanshark

Wow, and what did it cost you to do it yourself last month. That estimate is why people say "the dealer is a rip -off". That is literally a rip-off, if someone gave me an estimate like that I would report it to someone, like DMV.
What, do you clean your glove box every 4 years? Kiddin' I'm worse then that sometimes.

fluxedup

Is anyone really gonna believe the service writer did not write stuff up on individual tickets intentionally? If an unknowledgable or wealthy (and does not wnt to be bothered with it) customer authorizes these repairs the dealer makes a killing. If a more knowledgable customer makes any waves it can be brushed off as an honest "mistake". The Lexus guys here in phx do this crap all the time. My LS has ben in the family since it rolled off the showroom floor in '94 and every maintenance and repair job, at least when my Dad had her, was done at the dealer. Take it in for spark plug wires and they upsell the estimate till its $800. Bunch of stuff was added that did not need to be done. Glad my Dad was a CPA, they got away with nothing. I have worked in several auto shops throughout the last 20 years and everytime I quit because I did not like the dishonesty. The only job I had that was worse was bail bondsman. I imagine pawn broker is probably the other most dishonest job out there.....oh, i forgot, lawyer.