Exactly the same thing at Toyota. As far as the labor time.

Had a horrible experience there years ago and haven't been back since.

AggiePlaya said:

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Future son in law took his truck to Dodge in Bryan. They were trying to charge him $1200 for spark plug replacement.

Unbelievable gouging. Listed 4 hours of labor. A simple spark plug replacement.

Buyer beware!

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So I'm assuming you took it somewhere else? How much did it cost? Or did you do it yourself?

I use Brazos Valley Automotive for things i can't do myself. Always honest and do good work.

AggiePlaya said:

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Future son in law took his truck to Dodge in Bryan. They were trying to charge him $1200 for spark plug replacement.

Unbelievable gouging. Listed 4 hours of labor. A simple spark plug replacement.

Buyer beware!

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Nothing is simple on a Dodge Truck. $1200 sounds a little high, but reasonable. The plugs will cost around $500 when you add the labor and shop charges then it comes out north of 1K.

doubledog said:

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AggiePlaya said:

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Future son in law took his truck to Dodge in Bryan. They were trying to charge him $1200 for spark plug replacement.

Unbelievable gouging. Listed 4 hours of labor. A simple spark plug replacement.

Buyer beware!

---

Nothing is simple on a Dodge Truck. $1200 sounds a little high, but reasonable. The plugs will cost around $500 when you add the labor and shop charges then it comes out north of 1K.

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Quote:

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Plugs sure have gone up if they are $30 each. .\

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Sweet Kitten Feet said:

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AggiePlaya said:

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Future son in law took his truck to Dodge in Bryan. They were trying to charge him $1200 for spark plug replacement.

Unbelievable gouging. Listed 4 hours of labor. A simple spark plug replacement.

Buyer beware!

---

So I'm assuming you took it somewhere else? How much did it cost? Or did you do it yourself?

I use Brazos Valley Automotive for things i can't do myself. Always honest and do good work.

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After a conversation with the service manager, the bill was adjusted down to $560

JP76 said:

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Plugs are $260 at autozone


https://www.autozone.com/external-engine/spark-plug/p/ngk-ruthenium-hx-spark-plug-96355/1009734_0_0?searchText=Sparkplugs

Sounds like the future father in law should show the boy how to change them out

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Had he talked to me beforehand that would have obviously been the direction. Thanks for such insight!

My transverse 3.8 V6 requires the upper intake manifold to be removed to get to the rear bank of spark plugs.

Takes me quite a bit more than 4 hours, so 4 hours or more at the dealership sounds reasonable for my application.

On a longitudinal v8, it should be much much faster.

There was a mobile mechanic thread. I need to find it. The intent was to find an honest mechanic for simple jobs that would come to your site.

I take my Jeep to the Dodge dealership in Navasota for warranty work. Lithia is deceptive, and does shoddy work in my experience.

I've heard other folks take their chevys to the dealership in Navasota because Aggieland is not good.

Took my Viper to Lithia for a new battery. They charged me for the battery, but never changed it. Unless they put a 12 year old CarQuest battery in it.

The battery is located behind the wheel well of the rear driver's side tire. I doubt they ever even found it.

vmiaptetr said:

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Took my Viper to Lithia for a new battery. They charged me for the battery, but never changed it. Unless they put a 12 year old CarQuest battery in it.

The battery is located behind the wheel well of the rear driver's side tire. I doubt they ever even found it.

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Then what? Did you take it back to them to make sure it got replaced?

As for the OP, you aren't just paying for the parts. You're paying for the labor. Guess who sets the labor price? The OEM. So you want to mad at someone? Be mad at Chrysler

They gave me a battery, and I did it myself. I didn't trust them to look for it at that point, and really mess something up.

BrazosDog02 said:

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I think people tend to forget how much things cost. For automotive work, you can expect to pay 150-200 per hour for labor. Plus, you are paying book time at most any reputable shop. If the book says the plug change takes 8 hours, you get billed 8 hours. If it takes them 3 hours, so be it. People get upset over this as they feel entitled to less cost, but the opposite is also true in that if it takes them 2 days, then you are still only billed 8 hours.
I get it, I am still stuck in a time period 20 years ago when spark plugs were a couple of dollars and labor was 50/hour.

As with anything, if it's too expensive, then you can always run down to O'Reilly and get your parts and spend all weekend doing it yourself.

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Perhaps, however I have seen repairs not correct an issue and I'm out the 8 hours labor and now they want more money because it must be this other issue now.

Customers are almost never right, however mechanics know there isn't much competition and so they can force a diagnostic fee when you ask for a specific item/repair not related.

With the complexity of cars growing greater and greater... The laymen falls further behind and costs increase. I'm considering moving to older vehicles that can be well maintained with less electronics; but haven't made the leap. A few ECUs vs the complexity coming may be a good plan ahead.

I see both sides of the argument for sure.

True story: I never set foot in Lithia again after being mid-car purchase and seeing paper applications (multiple) with SSNs and other sensitive data strewn all over an organized salesman's desk for any random Joe to either take a picture of or steal right off of the desk itself.

Won't buy from there again and we have purchased several vehicles from them. A few years back we purchased a used Jeep Compass that was still under factory warranty and was certified. Had it for 3 weeks and check engine light came on. It sat in their shop for 2 1/2 months while they were trying to figure out what was wrong with it and replacing parts left and right. Heck Chrysler ended up paying the 2 months of car payments. They never figured out what was wrong so we sold it back to them. They must have figured it out or sent it to auction because someone bought it...I get the carfax reminders still in my email.

Also, the General manager told me that I could not get a (prorated) refund from Mopar when trading in my Jeep at another dealership, despite having done it a year prior after trying to get the appropriate paperwork from Lithia. I ended up calling Mopar myself and getting it taken care of.

The last straw was when Mopar refunded our gap and extended warranty then several weeks later I got a refund from the finance company for GAP. I am pretty sure that Lithia sold us Gap insurance and the finance company charged us for it as well.

I have a 77 F250 that I've been working on for four months trying to get it running right. Grass ain't always greener. You're not going to run down to Ford and buy a new carburetor. You're not even going to be able to buy a new quality rebuild kit for it anymore.

I appreciate what your saying and I do agree that if they charge for a fix and it doesn't fix it, then they need to proceed to fix it for free or refund the old fix and charge for the new. But yeah, that part does indeed kinda suck. In their defense, I have spent several hundreds of dollars chasing an issue only to have those parts not fix it. I see it both ways, but I'm also a shattered mechanic with 30 years experience on Ford trucks, and not an ASE shop tech. I give myself a free pass sometimes. Lol.

I hear ya. But most of dodge criticisms stems from products 10+ years ago. It was so bad that I didn't even consider them in 2015 when I purchased a POS Chevy 1500 coming off a worse POS f250 w 6.0.

Ford has had issues since the 70s. Pintos, TMF module by the distributor, Firestone 721 on explorers. Bronco II rollovers, yes fires!!!, 6.0s
Ford lawyers would settle and seal results. They covered crap up all the time.

Been going to Lithia for 10 years no issues!

Worth the drive, but anything for my truck I head down to Tomball.