Main dealer not always the best

Bought this car a few weeks ago. Good clean example, lots of history, the last owner had taken it to a Toyota main dealer for any work it needed for the last 3 years so all seamed good. After a couple of days I noticed the brakes were squealing quite badly. It had recently had new calipers disks and pads all around but on inspection I'd noticed that they hadn't cleaned up the carriers, so the pads were basically jammed. It's weird because you have to take these off to change the disks, just seemed lazy to me! All cleaned up with plenty of copper slip The lights inside the boot weren't working. Turned out to be the switch in the catch was a bit faulty. Quick blast of WD40 sorted that out I noticed when you shut the passenger door there was a lot of banging as if something was loose. The car had a recent window reg, turns out that one of rivets was missing. Drilled out and put a nut and bolt through sorted that little job. Also hadn't noticed on the test drive that the speakers or the lights in the door weren't working so whilst the door card was off had a look at that. It looks like they had tried to reconnect them but couldn't suss it so just bodged it and cable tied the rest up. Don't see how because they only plug in one way! Oh and another little job.....knew the aircon wasn't working so got money knocked off hoping it was just a regas. Turned out that one of the fuses on top of the battery must of been arcing out. Looks fine on inspection until you pull it out. Quick swap for an old one I had lying around and now I have ice cool air in the car!


Im no mechanic by any means but this little lot only took me a couple of hours. Just goes to show that main dealers can be just as lazy and incompetent as the next person.

thegoal007 said:

How do you know the dealer did not write all these things up as items requiring attention, but the owner never gave the go-ahead for repairs. On the other hand I'm guessing main dealer mechanics (like most jobs) are under great pressure with their tight timelines and it all has to be accounted for.

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Well my point was the fact that they'd obviously taken the brakes apart to change them and any mechanic worth anything would clean up the carriers to stop them from squealing. Same with the window reg that they'd changed but not bolted up properly or the wires not being plugged back in. Obviously the aircon and the boot lights not working were probably nothing to do with them, I was putting them in just in case anyone else is having the same problem.

S3AMJ said:

I feel your pain mate, bought my S3 in April from a dealer that sells more exotic cars like ferrari's etc!! They some how out it through the mot without any rear number plate light fittings in, let alone bulbs, they wrongly fitted the passenger side window regulator so it was squeeling like a pig. They fitted a pair of Audi TT rear springs that are 10mm lower than the S3's and have a lower load rating causing my camber to go out to -2.57! And I payed for them to get a cambelt, water pump fitted as it was overdue in the service book..... Makes me worry if they've hashed that up! But fingers crossed after I got the niggles sorted and put the car through its paces all seems well

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I've worked in the bodyshop of a main dealer for 15 years and I have friends who work at small garages, so I know how the game works. It just goes to show it doesn't really matter were you buy or take your car, it's the person who's working on it that counts.