This is just a word of warning to people who take their car to the dealership for any sort of work other than warrenty.

This happened like 7 months ago. I didn't know of any good car service shops in my area, at the time. I was getting my nismo exhaust put on, spark plugs changed (was being told by technosquare to go 1 step colder with my mods), and oil and rear diff oil changed for my nismo LSD. I decided to go to my local nissan dealer cause I figured surely they were capable of the job, and even if they charge me a little more than a regular car shop would, I was willing to pay it. I didn't know the area well enough yet to know any good shops and I wanted this done soon.

As a side note, the only dealer I've ever been to that has been 100% awesome is Performance Nissan so I know this doesn't apply to every Nissan, but maybe people can learn from my experience.


I brought my car in, said what I wanted done and dropped my car off. I said I'd wait since it was supposed to just be a couple hours.

Because I was curious how to change spark plugs because I never did it I wanted to see how it was done so I followed my car back to the car bay, met the mechanic and hung around and talked while he did the work. He was a really cool guy. The spark plugs were changed in about 30 min at the most. Seems more like 20-25 min - while we were talking which I'm sure slowed him down just slightly.

The service advisor never went over the $ amount it'd cost. I figured I'd pay around $300 for everything and I dunno, just never thought it'd be that much more.

My car is done and go to pay the bill and it's around $450. I'm wondering why I have to pay $150 for spark plug change? The service adviser says to me that's what they charge for that job. I ask what is their normal hourly labor rate, he says something like $78/hr. I say, ok cool so that took 30 min at the most, so you should be charging me more like $40 instead of $150 and that I was back there with him and saw with my own eyes how long it took. Then he went on how I'm not allowed back there for liability reasons etc.

He said he can give me a 10% discount, but he has to charge $150 cause that's what nissan charges. That he can't enter "spark plug change" into the computer and show $40 for it. So I say ok well I'll never be coming here again for anything other than strictly warrenty work if that's the case and that I'll be cancelling my lifetime oil change thing from when I bought my car (which is a rip off if you plan on using synthetic oil cause the dealer will charge you like $35 for the oil)

He said he can't do anything. And I have done exactly what I have said I would as well as give a lot of bad word of mouth - not just for that incident, but for a few others before that. (Tempe Nissan or whatever they're called now)

I should have asked specifically how much it would cost for all this stuff beforehand. I assumed they'd charge me their hourly rate for a spark plug change, not a huge bloated price

 

You didn't get an estimate before you authorized the service? That's S.O.P.

 

Doesnt seem like there are any good dealerships in arizona. I hate pinnacle nissan. I hate ABC nissan. I took my car into Midway Nissan a couple days ago, hopefully they`ll do a good job

 

The thing you don't realize is that techs don't get paid if they don't work. I can go to work and do nothing all day and not make any money. We get a certain amount of time for each job. That time is regulated and we are not supposed to change it. If we charge 2 hours to do something and it takes us 1 1/2 hours then we make money. If we charge 2 hours and it takes us 5 hours then we lose money (yes it does happen). If we charged the time we actually worked, we would only make 4-5 hours a day with the time it takes to do paperwork, get the car and get the parts. So just because you saw the tech do it faster than what they charge doesn't mean they ripped you off.