Rip Off Dealerships

[Tas_HSV]

Been on holidays over the chrissy break...jumped on the spirit of tas(good ride)and went over to melbourne.Well,we were in a small country town over there,and my car refused to start,no spark.No biggie i thought,im a RACT member,and theres a Holden dealership around the corner.Got it tilt trayed in there,They looked at it,and informed me the ignition module was blown and a new one was going to be $600!!!!.After I stopped laughing,and explained ild rather bash myself in the balls with a meat tenderiser than pay 600 for an ignition module,got it trailered back to a friends house,got an ignition module from repco($211,thanx guys),replaced it,and still no bloody spark!!!!!!after doing my own testing,I worked out the old ignition module was fine,it just had a buggered coil!!!.Well,kept the new module on anyway,just so i know its new,but if i had been a little less switched on,and had the dealership do the work,a dodgy coil could have turned into a $1000 bill.....no wonder the car industry is in the way it is with dealerships being no more than legalised theives....anyone else had any horror stories?

[Cobez]

Omfg, not another "Holden are a rip off / dodgy" thread.

FFS if people haven't learnt by now, they will never learn.

[DavidPartay]

I was quoted ~$450 at my last service at a 'reputable' dealer in Sydney.

The regular service price is $175, and they were charging me extra to do the following:

Clean the throttle body
Change transmission fluid
Change coolant
Replace a parking globe.

When I said I'll wait for the other stuff to be done, they said it'll be $35 to replace the parking globe. I said I'll do it myself. So I only paid the regular price.

Then I took the car to my local mechanic. Throttle body was clean (having been cleaning less than 12 months prior), tranny fluid was clean (the tranny was rebuilt after popping 2nd gear in 2006 2 months after I got the car, and it had been serviced by them since then), and the coolant was fine. It cost me $3.50 to buy a pair of parking globes and 2 minutes to replace the blown one, including the time it took for me to find the right globe and pay for it...

Oh, and what they DIDN'T tell me was that my brake fluid is past its best before date and will need to be changed, and my rear shocks are blown out.

I am VERY tempted to name the dealer because they have given me a LOT of trouble - anyone who remembers my previous thread looking for contacts high up will know the one, but as they didn't actually write down the 'faults' on the quote for the service (because they were lying) I could probably get into legal trouble if I name them.