Get Lexus Dealer Repair Quotes In Writing!

[CUMan]

There is a lot of Lexus dealer bashing on this forum; however, to this point, I have not been a participant in this. I purchased both my cars (a 1994 ES 300 and a 1993 LS 400) from a Lexus dealer and have no complaints or criticisms of their sales force and their actions. The sales person I dealt with was very helpful and professional and seemed to care about doing all he could to make my buying experience the type that would bring me back.

I wish I could say the same about their service personnel. I do most of my service work myself and have an independent garage (that I trust) to do that work which I feel inadequate to handle (timing belts, water pumps, etc.). However, there are times that I have to break down and trek to the Lexus dealership to have something done that the garage people cannot handle.

I had such a situation in March. My wife's ES 300 has had air conditioning problems for about two years. The cold air would go and come during the hottest part of the year. My garage people told me that the refrigerant level was okay, and they had no idea what was wrong.

Several months ago, when I first started reading on this forum and the Club Lexus forum, I quickly figured out the problem with the air conditioning - the expansion valve was faulty.

I called an independent car dealership which does sales and service on Lexus, and they quoted me $440.00 to replace the expansion valve and do the other work involved in this repair.

On March 15 I went by the Lexus dealer to talk with one of their service reps about this problem and to discuss a power steering problem with my LS 400. None of the service reps was in their office, and I was waiting for one of them to appear when a gentleman asked if he could help me. I told him I wanted to talk about some possible repairs to my cars.

He took me into his office, and we talked about the air conditioning problem. He was very familiar with the expansion valve problem on the ES 300's. He checked on his computer screen and quoted me a price of $419.00 less 10% to do the repair.

This certainly seemed reasonable to me, in light of the quote I had already gotten.

So, on April 5, I called the dealership, talked with one of the service reps, and set up an appointment on April 8 to bring the car in. During this call, I told him that I had been quoted $419.00 less 10% for the cost of the repair. He said: "that sounds about right."

April 8 arrives, and I take the car to the dealership. The service rep writes up the repair ticket, and I again tell him that I had been quoted $419.00 less 10% for the repair. He looks on his computer screen and then responds that the cost will be "about $390.00." I then left the dealership.

Several hours later, the service rep calls and tells me that I was correct on my diagnosis of the expansion valve being the problem; however, the repair costs would be $700.00. He would give me no explanation of why the cost had jumped so significantly. I told him there was no way I was going to pay them that much to do the job and to stop anything they were doing. I went back and picked up my car.

Last week, I had my car repaired at a local auto air conditioning specialist. They replaced the expansion valve and the receiver-drier, evacuated and refilled the refrigerant, and the total cost was $438.00.

I learned several lessons from this experience: (1) taking a car to a Lexus dealership for repairs should absolutely be a last resort. There seems to be some kind of disconnect here. How can a dealership sales force be so classy while their service people act like a school of greedy piranhas? (2) If you talk with a service person, and he quotes repair costs, insist that he put it in writing over his signature. I failed to do this. I didn't even remember the name of the gentlemen I talked with on March 15. (In a subsequent conversation with the service complaint person at the dealership, I learned that the person who quoted me the repair prices was apparently the Service Manager at the dealership.) I would assume that if I had told the service rep when I first talked with him that I had been quoted this price by the Service Manager, things might have gone differently.

I guess the thing that irks me most is that the service rep had two opportunities to tell me that the work could not be done for the amount I had been quoted. If he had done this, I would not have wasted his time or mine.

It will take a long time to forgive and forget - and it will certainly be a long time before I set foot in a Lexus service department again.