personally i got rip off by burrad acura (located at terminal)
and richmond ok tire

Similar to a blinker fluid change or re-greasing muffler bearings.

:badpokerface:

those guys are also commission based. Hustled hard.

Not trying to take the dealer's side but if they recommended it to her, explained to her and she said yes, OP and his mom don't have much leverage

true...but to someone with little to no knowledge of cars, one can argue that she was manipulated into getting services she never needed

So you mean it's ok for someone 'recommend' something you don't need, but make it sound like it's something you need, and convince you to pay for some BS services, then it's ok?

I have to agree with this one.

You can't blame anyone if you didn't read the Owner's Manual(which, even if you don't have one, they are available as free PDFs from manufacturer's website). If you read it, you probably know most of the service upsell is BS.

I don't think anyone is trying to say the dealership's actions are justified or ethical, but I don't think those customers who got ripped off are completely innocent. A little reading and Google search go a long way.

uh yeah...ok let's expect my 50 something mother to know the maintenance interval and car lingo of her 2017 Rav, and remember all that when someone who's job it is to know all of this is upselling the crap out of her and throwing her all sorts of information

y'all act like you've never been upsold before

She can barely connect the infotainment to her phone after reading the instructions

it's predatory behaviour from the dealership plain and simple

That is definitely not what I mean. I'm not gonna say whether or not what the dealer said is ethical or unethical but ultimately, she makes the final call to go ahead or not with the "recommendations" which sounds like she authorized it after she was presented with the information. If the dealership did the additional work without approval then that's a different story.

There is an old Chinese saying that goes like this: don't have the heart to harm someone, and always have the heart to defend yourself. Not everyone is nice out there, I think anyone should know that much.

I don't think asking anyone to read a simple instruction book is too much, unless you are physically disabled to do so. If she can't figure out, maybe you should help her out a bit.

Again, not trying to justify the dealership's actions, and it's nice of you to share your experience, but in any case, you won't get that money back, just like with most frauds. Everyone knows frauds are bad, but wouldn't it be nice to not lose that money in the first place?

i get it, but at the end of the day, some fuckery has happened here
dealership used its position and expertise to pinch a few hundred dollars off someone by muddling their judgement with fear and doubt

like i said, she can read it, but i wouldn't expect her to remember all of it when she's got a tech or front service person spewing car lingo, saying things like, well...if you don't do it now, it could break down later on and it'll be 10 times as much to fix!

well for one my mother is almost 60 with poor english, she can barely get by speaking and you expect her to read a 700 page owners manual where the service interval full of jargons and technical terms?

Now if you went to the dentist and your dentist up-sold a bunch of BS services thats not only has no benefit to you, but also cost 5x the price of the service you need, do you blame yourself for not going to dentist school for 5 years to understand what services you need for your teeth?

As much as she got screwed over on the price I'd be even more worried if they even did the work they said they did.

"Sure miss that throttle body is clean as a whistle now, lol."

Dealers are notorious for this, how many extra fees do they probably get away with when they sell a car to someone who is clueless? Next time she'll at least know better.

Okay, so why don't you accompany her or explain it to her? There are ways around this.

I understand the frustration and agree that the dealerships should be accused of frauds for doing this kind of stuff, but like I said, you can't expect everyone out there to be nice. Not everyone has standards. I am just saying a bit of self-defense definitely helps.

As for your question, I would do some research and see what is needed before I shell out a significant amount of money. There is nothing weird about thinking over a couple hundred bucks before you spend it. And you don't need to have the knowledge to open up skulls to not get ripped off at dentists, and you don't need to have enough knowledge to rebuild an engine to not get ripped off at car dealerships. Google is your friend.

That's a good point.

Wasn't there another CBC marketplace video showing a quick lube place ripping people off this way?

ask to see the service schedule. if it was due at that milage or age, and the advisor reconmended it, customer signed for it, hard to argue. mom should have said no, or called you on the spot to be explained to.

here is my analysis. based on the pictures you provided.

delivery date feb 12 2016. milage is 35,722km. so the car is about 20months old or 35,000km interval

5w20 oil should be synthetic if its at this weight

dont know what an emissions flush is, but im guessing its a EFI? id say this is a tad early, but depends on the manufactuers reconmended service interval

did a quick search and found this.

https://www.dodge.com/download/pdf/m...van-OM-2nd.pdf assuming this may be a US owners manual. page 676 is the maintenance schedule.

another quick search found this.
Recommended Maintenance Schedule | Cooksville Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram

the 2016 caravan falls inbetween the 18 month/30k service and the 21 month / 35k service. depending on what was done or postponed on a previous visit.

18 Months or 30,000 Kms

Premium Lube, Oil & Filter
Check All Fluids
Multi-Point Inspection
Tire Rotation & Balance 4 Wheel
Fuel Induction Service
Engine Tune-up*

21 Months or 35,000 Kms

Premium Lube, Oil & Filter
Check All Fluids
Multi-Point Inspection

so this little bit of investigation shows the recommended service.
- the oil change and tire rotation, multi point inspection are grouped into a fall special. its in the recommended interval above
- the emissions flush looks like the fuel induction service. its in the recommended interval above.

the only upsell i see is the throttle service. having owned a caravan, i can tell you i did my own throttle servicing every oil change due to how horribly it gummed up.

so... what is the problem here? your pre-conception of what was needed for the car, or what was recommended from the manufacturer?


https://imgur.com/WKo5N8N.jpg
https://imgur.com/GAkpmXc.jpg

Why would you read all 700 pages when there is a table of contents that directs you right to the 3-4 pages that cover the service intervals? You must have had a hell of a time in school reading an entire textbook just to see one example.

Even then, is it really that hard to ask the people at the dealership to show you that what they are suggesting is part of the maintenance schedule? At the end of the day this is your multi-thousand dollar asset (a depreciating one, but still), so maybe put in more than the bare minimum amount of effort.

this is why I never get my car serviced at dealerships. Bunch of dishonest crooks. Only reputable private shops get my money when it comes to maintenance.

This is what I was going to post.

For those saying that it's his moms fault for signing for it, doesn't absolve the dealership of predatory behaviour and misrepresentation, which is actually against the law in this country.

So yes, upselling needlessly and pushing people to buy a service they don't need is illegal regardless of if the person signs for it, or agrees to it.

Now the issue here is proving that the car didn't need it, it's very easy for a dealer to say "upon inspection we noticed excess build up, which is why we recommended this service even though it's not typically needed". Could be complete bullshit, but it's a slippery situation to try to prove that someone performed a service you truly didn't need and they knew you didn't need it.

I'll post face this, with the fact that I don't know if the service was required, haven't looked it up, but it looks like SG above has, and I'd believe him if he says it's within the realm.

5W20 is available as conventional, synthetic blend, and synthetic oil. It is 0W20 that is only available as synthetic.

I am not familiar with Dodge at all, so I have no idea whether a 2016 Caravan specifies conventional or synthetic oil at all.

An emissions flush is basically/almost the same thing as induction flush which are cleaners that is run through intake manifold via vacuum hose to clean carbon or dirt just like people running Seafoam in their vehicle except it is made by B&G, etc. The other part of the flush is then poured into the gas tank to clean the fuel injector tips. The proper way is to run the fuel injector cleaner by tapping into the fuel line before the fuel rail.

I would be interested to know is who recommended the add on services, the service adviser (SA) when the vehicle was brought in or was it the tech?

-If it was the SA, how does he know it actually needs the add ons? How does he know if it was possibly done somewhere else at an earlier mileage?

-If it was the tech, did he recommend it by mileage/time or did he physically look at the TB and see it was gummed up and dirty? The problem is most techs are lazy and love the gravy train so most just recommend add ons by mileage.

When I was a SA (10 years), I dealt with many techs and there were only a handful I trusted when calling the customer about work to be done on their vehicle(s). I would go to the shop to look at the parts so I knew first hand what the deal was.


TL;DR
Selling at the counter (SA) based on mileage is not right, so that means the tech has to look at the parts and see if it needs the extra work but most techs are lazy.

Burden off proof is on the seller/service provider if taken to court.

To avoid this mess in the future, you should either go with your mom next time, or at the very least, have her give you a call to go over some of the service before she tells the dealership to go ahead with it.

I never let my wife take the car in for service... Those guys up-sell so much every time I'm there, I know my wife wouldn't make it out safely if she went alone. lol

The link that said fuel induction service is from another independent dealer website trying to mislead customers. In the actual owners manual link you posted says nothing about fuel induction service. Here is the screen shot from the actual service manual:

https://imgur.com/SCKl5pF.jpg