>Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly. I'm going to have to stop you there. A little about me

>Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly. I'm going to have to stop you there. A little about me, I was a college dropout and worked as a mechanic for a few years, then went back and completed my undergrad, got a Master's and I've been white collar for a couple of decades, but I've always done as much work on my car myself as possible. 20 years ago we used to call the dealership service department the "stealership." I'm afraid nothing has changed. I normally won't let the Toyota dealer lay even a finger on my car but I recently had some recall work done (fuel pump). I also asked them to look at another issue since the car was there and they presumably had the specialized equipment and knowledge to diagnose a tricky automatic transmission problem. Well they couldn't even replicate the problem, even though I left detailed instructions on how to reproduce (yay bug reporting experience!). I watched the test drive on my dashcam and he didn't do what I said. Worse, they messed up the recall repair and left equipment in my car. I told them it was probably the sending unit. They diagnosed the car for over 6 hours, checking everything BUT the sending unit, before finally giving in and realizing it was indeed the sending unit (it's the fancy name for a float in the gas tank). It took them another 4 hours to finally fix it. I was left without my car for two full days for a repair that they told me was a 3-hour job. Never, EVER take your car to the dealership EVER once your car is out of warranty. I have friends that used to have car dealerships in the family. They don't make much money on the sale of cars, the service department is under intense pressure to generate most of the profits for the dealership. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get your money. I cannot stress this enough. STAY AWAY FROM AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SERVICE DEPARTMENTS. The average HN reader, with a little internet searching and some common sense, is better equipped to diagnose cars than a dealership.