AAAArrrgggg it makes my blood boil.
At work we run a small fleet of Corolla Station wagons, these are used by our female sales managers all over the country and serviced at the closest Toyota Dealer.
Just had the invoice for a 30.000klm service on one of these which was paid by the driver and she had sent this in for re-imbursement. (our normal practice)
To my surprise it included $94.60 for Injector service $32.20 Injector clean kit and $9.00 for Oil system cleaner.
I’m not as green as I’m frog looking, so here follows the conversation with the Service manager at the Toyota dealership.
GT I’m querying some items on Invoice XYZ
SM Oh they are an Injector clean service and Oil system clean.
GT are they a Toyota specified service item?
SM
Well…….not exactly.
GT What do you mean?
SM
Well we just recommend it to our customer because it’s very good.
GT So it’s a Wynns type additive.
SM
Well……yes.
GT Is it not standard practice with corporate fleet cars not to add these items.
SM
Well…….yes usually. But we had the driver authorise these items.
GT So you have that in writing with a signature then.
SM Probably
GT So I’ll take that as a No then. So can you please arrange a refund to be sent out then.
SM Oh we can’t do that it’s not our policy
GT That’s OK. I’ll take it up with Toyota directly.
SM Could you just hold for a moment.
SM (After a couple of seconds) Where would you like the cheque sent.
A couple of little known facts here:
Additive companies aggressively market their product through dealerships they have all sorts of incentives to encourage use by the service staff. We’re talking everything from electrical goods, tools, to trips etc etc. depending on how much is sold.
They also have a deal where if a customer complains about it they will re-imburse the dealership, no questions asked.
So the moral is
check what you sign when you drop the car off,
check the invoice and if anything is not book service don’t pay. You’ll get no argument if you follow the script above.
I’m not moaning about additives as such, if someone wants to use them, fine.
It’s the underhanded way it’s done that I object to.
Dealers will not normal try this with fleet cars, but I’m sure they thought they could get away with it because it was a woman and she was actually paying the invoice.