Car dealership ripoff: Hidden-camera investigation

Stuff like this always interests me:

yea, me too.....the stealerships are one of the worst. I have a caught a bodyship in our area and a popular tire/service establishment charging for work not done.

watched about half of it - few points from my professional experience

Dealership 'may be a bit early' on the brake replacement, but who's to say they dont have different thresholds for replacement than The independent mechanic?

And she's a female driver, generally women know their vehicles less than men do, and may or may not notice the vibrations, etc.

Just my .02

Nothing new...

Just another day in this crooked world

Last time I went back to my dealership for my last free oil change they brought back the filthiest air filter I've ever seen, looked liked a damn vacuum cleaner filter, oh sir these needs to be changed asap... ya that one does indeed but that's not my filter guy. He was confused, I told him go check inside my real filter it has a yellow sabotage mark.

He came back with some bs story that he was mistaken, ya right. Gave me a bunch of coupons for half off oil changes, but if you DO use one of those coupons it costs more then a regular oil change.

Wish I could buy vehicles on amazon. Prime 2 day plz.

A friend of mine worked at a GM dealership as a mechanic for almost 30 years and needed tires for his truck. It is a 17 year old GMC but it is in great shape. He meticulously maintains all of his vehicles and went over the front end of his truck prior to taking it in for new tires and an alignment. He said everything was tight and looked great. The tire shop put his truck on the lift, came out a bit later and told him his truck needed a ball joint or tie rod end, I don't remember. He looked at the guy and said "roll the son of a $&@"? out.....I worked at a dealership as a mechanic for almost 30 years and I went thru that front end last night before I brought it in. There is nothing wrong with it". The owner of the shop overheard him getting upset and smoothed things over and apologized.


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In before.......

I get why they do this obviously (scamming), but as someone who runs a shop doing body and mechanical, the last thing I want to do is more work on someone's car or do any work for that matter that doesn't actually need to be done. It's stressful enough meeting deadlines and then the risk of having them come back because they don't like something you touched and demanding a refund on top of it being fixed is just not worth the stress. Obviously mechanical is a lot more straight forward, but with body and paint there is a lot less margin for error as it falls on the skills of the body guys and painters for that given day. It's not worth the risk, financially and reputation.

**** that noise.

It's easy to watch these videos and judge, but the service manager, assistant, and advisers are all people just working a job.

I worked in an aftermarket chain and a Ford dealership many times, and I can tell you that while mechanics can be sleezy, everyone has a different idea of what it means for brakes, suspension, and tires to need replacement.

I had a guy tell me the tire still had rubber on it so I was lying to him when I said it needed to be replaced. 10 year old tire showing cords on the inside. I let him go. Dude man came back next week with a blown tire. Go figure.

I had a guy with a Super Duty come in with a lifetime alignment. Truck pulled to the right. He had just done a lift on it (spring lift). Put it on the rack, throw it into OEM specs, truck still pulls. Demanded his money back even after showing him on the screen that it was in spec. Grabbed the shop foreman, he showed him that the lift he bought had some cheap shitty blocks that caused the rear end to cat walk to the left after looking it over. Guess what? Dude man didn't feel like he needed to pay for the diagnosis or inspection and still demanded his money back.

Point is.. while everyone thinks mechanics/advisers are sleazy, so are the customers who go there.

Zemedici said:

watched about half of it -

And she's a female driver, generally women know their vehicles less than men do, and may or may not notice the vibrations, etc.

Just my .02

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So you saw the first 2 minutes where the safety/service tech took it for a test drive also?

Zemedici said:

watched about half of it - few points from my professional experience

Dealership 'may be a bit early' on the brake replacement, but who's to say they dont have different thresholds for replacement than The independent mechanic?

And she's a female driver, generally women know their vehicles less than men do, and may or may not notice the vibrations, etc.

Just my .02

Click to expand...

I have been to that dealer in the video( I live in Toronto) a few months ago to service my sister's car. I went in for just an oil change and I just did the front brakes myself prior to going to the dealership. After a very long wait for them to the oil change, they advised my sister that the front brakes need service, I need a brake fluid change, all the wheels need to be rebalanced every 30k kilometers (due to age), new transmission fluid, ect ect. They also told me that the brake pads currently in the car were not OEM Honda pads( I didn't tell the mechanic I bought it from their very own parts department ). Anyhow, this is a 2010 Honda Accord Coupe with only 19k miles on it. They went out of their way to come up with a nearly $2k service bill. The only service the car needed was the oil change, nothing else. I have never been to a dealer that went out of their way to rip someone off like this dealer did.

VRYALT3R3D said:

I have been to that dealer in the video( I live in Toronto) a few months ago to service my sister's car. I went in for just an oil change and I just did the front brakes myself prior to going to the dealership. After a very long wait for them to the oil change, they advised my sister that the front brakes need service, I need a brake fluid change, all the wheels need to be rebalanced every 30k kilometers (due to age), new transmission fluid, ect ect. They also told me that the brake pads currently in the car were not OEM Honda pads( I didn't tell the mechanic I bought it from their very own parts department ). Anyhow, this is a 2010 Honda Accord Coupe with only 19k miles on it. They went out of their way to come up with a nearly $2k service bill. The only service the car needed was the oil change, nothing else. I have never been to a dealer that went out of their way to rip someone off like this dealer did.

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woah.......what a nightmare.

Glad they found that dealership to expose

Got to watch this a few weeks back...Service advisers on commission WTF? Never heard of that before. And I don't even know how that woman SA at the Chrysler/Jeep dealership could even tell them with a straight face that the Jeep needed all that work to be done to it!

I feel like i'm getting scammed anytime I visit a dealer. My truck had the front differential replaced at the dealer. I brought it back 10k miles later for a recall and was given a list of fluids that needed changing, one of which was the diff! I'm not sure how their record system wouldnt of picked up on it being replaced 10k miles before. Next was the air filter which i refused and figured i'd change it out when I do my next oil change. When that time came, i changed the oil and opened the airbox and to my surprise, the air filter was no where to be found! This was a toyota dealer

Are those drum brakes on an 08 Civic?!

Jefe said:

Are those drum brakes on an 08 Civic?!

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Yes, its probably a DX which has hardly any options

After working for years in a Ford Dealership as Service and then Operations manager I can go on and on about stories Opposite of this. Glad I'm no longer in that world. The owner of the dealership I worked for (60+ year business) was the straightest person I've ever dealt with..by far, yet 90% of the people in the front door label you a crook before they get there. I can recount several times we would suggest to a customer that they have XXXX many miles left on their brakes, tires, service, etc. Only to have them go to another shop the next time and have all that stuff replaced and come back and yell at me how "they could have been Killed!" Not commenting on the shop in the video, but I take all these stories with a grain of salt after what I've personally seen in the business.

blownstang01 said:

After working for years in a Ford Dealership as Service and then Operations manager I can go on and on about stories Opposite of this. Glad I'm no longer in that world. The owner of the dealership I worked for (60+ year business) was the straightest person I've ever dealt with..by far, yet 90% of the people in the front door label you a crook before they get there. I can recount several times we would suggest to a customer that they have XXXX many miles left on their brakes, tires, service, etc. Only to have them go to another shop the next time and have all that stuff replaced and come back and yell at me how "they could have been Killed!" Not commenting on the shop in the video, but I take all these stories with a grain of salt after what I've personally seen in the business.

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basically what I was getting at with my shorthanded post, not all dealerships have bad service practices / underqualified advisors.

Guys.... this is all in Canada... we are in the US, this doesn't happen here.