30,000 miles checkup

[yarswiss]

I was just told by my dealer that my 30K miles checkup is due, and they quoted me a price of $320 for a full detail, including changing filters, oil, brake fluid, trans fluid and the whole shebang.

Personally I think this is way too expensive, so I wanted to know if anyone has any suggestions of either where they did theirs, or how. As much as I would like to do it myself, I don't really have the technical know-how, and I don't know any good garages around where I live.

For anyone who's had theirs done, what did you do?

[nemelek]

Ask for a print out of services they perform. Then compare that to the schedule maintaince in the owners manual. In my experience they differ greatly. Where I live we have a few non dealer service places like the Toy Doctor. They are a lot cheaper and more trust worthy.

[voodoo22]

Especially the way you drive and take care of your car, I guarantee the dealer service is overkill.

You can tell them what you want done and what you don't want done. I'm at 40k kms so far and all I've had them to this point is the oil changes. In Canada they want to replace your cabin air filter every 16k kms and charge you $52. No thank you. They also want to charge you nearly a $100 to walk around your car.

Research what should be looked at at this point in your cars life and request they only do those things. An oil change is probably all you need, but do your research first and make sure.

There is some value to taking your car to a dealer. It does add to the resale value when you have a record of your servicing from Toyota and it could make dealing with warranty issues a little easier. If you don't care too much about either of those issues, I'd find a private place.

You don't want to skimp out and cause damage to your car, but the main purpose of a car like this is to save money and there's no point throwing money away on wasteful stuff either.

For example, my last service they wanted to charge nearly $200 to walk around and look at things and change the cabin air filter. I asked them to do a standard oil change and my bill was just over $40 after tax instead of over $200.

[aca72]

$320 is robbery.

Refer to your maintenance guide that came with your manual and follow it.

Check this one too to get a ball park figure of the cost of the service:

http://www.edmunds.com/maintenance/select.html

Also go to your dealer's website to get service coupons if available.

[jamal1984]

$320 = $300 dollars in their pockets, worth only $20.