Regarding Round Rock Toyota Service Department.......

Regarding Round Rock Toyota Service Department....

A couple of months ago I took my Toyota FJ Cruiser to the service department at Round Rock Toyota ( RRT) because the airbag light was constantly staying lit on my dashboard. I was waiting in the waiting room when the service adviser informed me that he had bad news . He took me back to the shop where my vehicle was and I was told that rats had eaten the electrical wiring to the airbag monitoring system (SRS). I was told it would cost $1900 to repair, but that my insurance company would cover it. Through some mis-communication with my insurance company, it took me a few weeks later to find out the total cost of repair was $4500 and that the $1900 quote was only for the part. RRT told me that the SRS wiring harness would have to be replaced and that was labor intensive because it had connections under the dashboard and behind the seats that required time consuming dis-assembly.

When I learned what the total cost was, I began to think that something did not seem right. Having never really inspected the wires the varmints ate, I popped the hood on my FJ Cruiser and made a thorough inspection. The wiring harness that RRT wanted to replace was undamaged. What was eaten through were 2 low voltage wires from what I will call the SRS control box to the actuators in the front bumper. All that needed to be done was properly reconnect the 2 wires, which was a pretty simple job with little time investment. I had the wires properly reconnected with a waterproof connection and the airbag light on the dash went off. All is well.

I confronted the service adviser at RRT about this and he did not deny that the only work that needed to be done was a simple reconnect of those 2 wires. In fact, he just would not respond to my questions about it.

I am disappointed in RRT. Barring some convincing evidence that a complete replacement of the wiring harness was justified, which I have asked for and was ignored by them, what they have attempted to do was blatantly dishonest.

The lesson here is: don't take any mechanic's word for what needs repairing without investigating it yourself and don't assume that just because the service department belongs to a dealer, that they will conduct their affairs in an honest manner. I always ask for the old parts that are replaced to be provided to me when the vehicle is repaired. That way I know what was replaced and I can check old parts to in fact see if they really needed replacing.

The intent of this posting is just to warn people about the RRT service department.