Who peforms the service on your car?

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Went to my local Toyota dealer today to look at new Rav4s. Get to talking to the sales guy. He asks me about my current cars and whatnot. Tell him I have a 2004 Rav4 with 333,000 miles. He's a bit shocked. After we look at the new Rav4s he asks me where I take my vehicle for servicing. I tell him I do it my self. He just stares at me in disbelief. He asks if I'm a mechanic. I tell him no. He asks where I do the work, if I have a garage. I say, yes, I have a garage. He says, "Oh, you have one of those lifts in floor to raise the car up?" I laugh, no. Now, he's really curious. How do you get under the car to change the oil? I nearly blow his mind when I tell him I changed the starter and radiator in the Rav4 and learned how on youtube. "How can you learn this from youtube?" I thought it was funny that a car salesman knows zero about basic car maintenance.
 
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He's doing everything he can think of to butter you up some. The longer you stay in the showroom the more likely you will buy.
 
Same chatter but w/ auto mechanics whenever I have to bring my vehicles in for safety checks, tires or an alignment. I feel like I'm stealing their business when I tell them I can change the brakes or replace the cabin air filter. I like to tell them DIY is important when it comes to maintaining older vehicles nowadays.
 
Originally Posted By: SatinSilver
He's doing everything he can think of to butter you up some. The longer you stay in the showroom the more likely you will buy.


Told him the Rav4 was for my wife and he gave me the 23 skidoo. He wasn't interested in spending a lot of time with me.
 
Small talk, and blowing smoke and sunshine you know where helps in making a sale. If not at the present time down the road. The salesman probably had no one else to sell to so he figured what the [censored]. Good salesmen do it all the time. You might even send someone his way who is in the market for a car because he seemed like a nice guy.

Then there are sales people who are totally clueless when it comes to auto repair.
 
I do 99% of the work on my cars. The only thing I don't do are tires and alignments.
 
Sales people know absolutely nothing about cars or anything mechanical. One of our sales people bought a used boat, we asked him if he checked to make sure the brake pedal was firm because boat brakes are really expensive. He got all worried and it wasn't until he searched online later that night that he realized we were yanking his chain.

Service advisors are typically better, but techs are your best bet if they're willing to talk to you. Most are not.

On the topic of advisors though, we have one ex-sales service advisor who is absolutely painful to deal with. If you tell him a car has a valve cover leak, he will tell the customer "your valve cover is broken" haha.

I was an advisor myself for a bit, but it pays less than tech wages and you have to work longer hours and deal with some completely irrational people.
 
I've always done all my own repairs and maintenance ever since I've been driving, which is over 20 years now. Everything from oil changes to replacing engines and transmissions.
 
Same old stuff.Most people here have a desire to learn, probably first related to cost as much as anything.Couldn't get my son to take any interest at all in car maintenance.I told him thats fine, just expect to have a car payment the rest of your life.
 
I usually try to do as much as I feel comfortable with doing with the tools I have. I don't always get it right though, and have had some things come back to bite me, but live and learn.
 
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Small talk, and blowing smoke and sunshine you know where helps in making a sale. If not at the present time down the road. The salesman probably had no one else to sell to so he figured what the [censored]. Good salesmen do it all the time. You might even send someone his way who is in the market for a car because he seemed like a nice guy.

Then there are sales people who are totally clueless when it comes to auto repair.


My wife is totally clueless but she knows there are people that do their own work. She knows that AutoZone and AAP exist and there are lots of those stores.
 
Originally Posted By: robertcope
I do 99% of the work on my cars. The only thing I don't do are tires and alignments.


+1. Also can't do my own emissions tests!
 
It does blow people away when you suggest that they should do their own fluid changes and that brakes are really pretty cheap and easy to do right.
Radiator? Piece of cake on most cars.
Clutch?
Harder, but mainly a lot of parts to remove, not technically difficult.
Timing belt?
Once again, not hard. The hardest part will be getting the crank pulley bolt out.
If you view all of this as a challenging hobby, then you'll save big dollars over the life of any car as well as over your driving life.
You'll also develop a really good understanding of how things work and you'll know what's reasonable with work you choose to farm out.
Nobody will take care of your car as well as you will.
 
One of the very-very best threads ever!

Car dealers are burbling scum. They chat to make a sale, PERIOD.

I was a precocious kid (maybe even occasionally reckless). My father had owned a 1966 Oldsmobile 98 LS with, among many options, the finest tilt & telescoping steering wheel ever built.

He went to buy a 1971 Mercury Monterey and reminiscently mentioned the Olds' wheel. The salesman gave my Dad a look of limitless annoyance.

I turned to my Dad and said, "Look at the face this guy just made! You're still going to buy from him?" My Dad didn't kill me and the salesman gave me the same look. I told him to his face that he should learn how to talk to people.

It was one of those events which realigns (lowers) your overall impression of your parents' common sense.
 
True story: Years ago I worked for a VW dealer. They hired a girl to be an assistant service writer and she did not know that the VW was air cooled and did not have a radiator. Sheesh
 
I remember a while back when my truck was only like 3 or 4 years old and I stopped by the dealer to grab a fuel filter and the sales guy acted like my truck was ancient, he's like man when you gonna trade that thing in? I was like why? Also I'm thinking to myself why would I even think about buying a truck from here when you talk to me like that.
 
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