On June 15 I brought my 1998 Dodge Caravan to Tom Saitta's Dodgeland USA, located at 5750 Sky Pinte Dr. Las Vegas Nevada. The air conditioner belt had broken and needed to be replaced. I was sent home with a quote of $195 for the repair. The next morning a service advisor, Rod Walters, called to tell me that my vehicle was desparate need of many repairs. After he went on for about 2 minutes listing all the various repairs needed he then told me that the bill would be $4000. While I was still stunned he then went on to ask if I wanted him to get right on with the repairs, I told him "no" and that my husband would be contacting him shortly to talk this all over with him. After talking to him we decided to go down and see for ourselves what was wrong with our van.
Mr. Walters showed us the broken air conditioner belt and told us that not only did it need to be replaced but also the compressor would also have to be replaced. Well I'm no dummy, if the belt is broken there is no way to tell what else may need to be replaced until after you replace the belt and try to use the air conditioner. He then went on to point out that there was some sort of oil leak. Well once again I'm no dummy, there had been visible signs of an oil leak on my driveway so I didn't put much stocl into that claim.
He also said the timimg belt was being damaged by the "oil leak", but the case sealing the timing belt had not been touched! There was no way he could have known if there was anything wrong with the timing belt without opening the sealed case. He pointed out bunch more things but I had already made up my mind to take my van elswhere. We must have looked pretty stupid because when we told the service advisor that we weren't interested in them doing any work on our van and he then offered to have us trade in our van! We said "no thanks just give us our van back", we were then charged $89 for their "inspection". What a scam, first scare the victim into beliveing their car needs major repair work to the tune of thousands of dollars and when the victims balks offer to trade in the car for something newer. I feel sorry for those folks who fall for this trap!
After all was said and done I had a local mechanic repair my air conditoner for $148, and he also assured me that there was nothing else that needed repairing. The moral of the story is if it sounds fishy, WALK OUT!!!
I would like to get my $89 back, considering that I would have had the dealership do the repair work had they not tried to rip me off. I don't think I, or anyone else, should have to pay when a business gets greedy and tries to steal from their customers.
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