$300 To Replace My Car's Battery? Not Today, Thank You

Recently I had my Prius at a Toyota dealers’ shop after a check-engine light came on. One of the things the computer diagnosis showed, the service rep said, was a bad auxiliary battery. In a Prius hybrid, that’s the small battery used to power the interior lights and the car’s computer and so on (it’s not the large battery that makes the car move).

“You’ve had the car, for what, around seven years now?” he asked. “Do you still have the original battery in there?”

“I don’t have a clue,” I replied.

“Well, it was only putting out eight volts,” said the customer rep. I asked him how much a replacement would cost to install. “Around $300,” was the reply. That sounded like a lot to me, when similar batteries that put out 12 volts in regular cars only run around $60 or $80. I came up with an excuse not to change the battery.

I got home, got out the owner’s manual, found out where the battery was located (hidden under the rear floorboard), and measured its voltage with a voltmeter, which turned out to be in the 12-volt range. Even under load without the gasoline engine going, the output was still 12 volts. Pretty healthy.

Yeah, it was one of those attempted con jobs. I’ve heard that auto dealers make most of their profits from doing maintenance and repairs to vehicles rather than from the more competitive car sales, where people shop around for the best deal.

I don’t want to paint all dealers with this brush, but there are some out there, just as I’m sure there are a few independent shops that pull these kinds of shenanigans.

Going back in time, I hadn’t owned my first car more than a couple weeks back in the 1960s before I ran up against my first incident of automobile repair scams. In my twenties, I was driving my car back to California from the Midwest and stopped for gas out in the middle of nowhere. This was in the days of gas station attendants, so I made my way to the bathroom while the guy filled up my tank. Upon my return the attendant showed me gouges in a couple of my tires that he said were caused by bad shock absorbers. Not very knowledgeable about car stuff, I forked out a lot of dough to have new shocks installed. Later, on a TV show, I learned that this had become a common rip-off. The gas attendant had a chisel or other gouging tool and had quickly made the tires look distressed.

Then later, I often ran up against something that almost all of us run into – the dirty air filter ploy. While we’re waiting in a quick oil-change place or dealership an employee comes in with our air filter with a little bit of dark soil showing on it. They are careful not to say that it needs to be replaced; they merely ask if we want it replaced. Myself – I follow the manufacturer’s recommendations on how often the filter needs to be replaced.

Navigating the worlds of auto maintenance and repair can be tricky. You wonder if you can trust the dealer. You wonder if you can trust an independent shop. Most of us don’t know beans about brake lines, transmissions, car computers, CV boots, and so on, so we hope for honesty. When we find a shop where we absolutely trust the people, we’re willing to pay more, just for not having to worry about being ripped off. When I lived in San Mateo, we used such a shop in San Carlos, run by two brothers. We trusted them and their employees absolutely. People like that are worth their weight in gold.

It got to the point where we stopped telling people about them because we were afraid of making them too busy, and having to wait too long to get an appointment.

If you have a close friend or brother who runs a repair shop, you figure they’re not going to screw around with you.

It can be the same in the medical and dental world. Most of us know very little about treating bodily problems and we lean heavily on the expertise of the people in the white coats. We assume that they are there to help us and not vacuum dollars from our wallets. And yet we know that they run the gamut from saints and angels to people more interested in buying BMWs and multi-million-dollar homes. Unlike comparing dealer’s prices on a particular new car, we usually blindly accept what doctors and dentists charge, without shopping around. If we have medical insurance, it’s the insurance company’s worry, right?

Recently a dentist opened a business in Carmichael, Second Opinion Dental, to verify that all the work your usual dentist wants to do is actually needed. Seems reasonable. The business doesn’t do actual dental work, just diagnosis.

Getting back to cars, I’ve decided to end my maintenance/repair relationship with my Toyota dealer. I’ll use independents as much as possible, save money, and develop some trust.