AutoNation Toyota Arapahoe

I went to AutoNation Toyota Arapahoe on Saturday, August 12th to get an oil change and my 45,000 mile check in. I dropped my car off at my scheduled 9:45am appointment time. I did not finish and leave until 1:45pm. At the end I asked Andre the “Service Advisor” if it was common for this to take 4 hours, and he bluntly replied that it was Saturday and they are not fully staffed so yes. Not an apology or anything to recognize the incredible inconvenience of spending 4 hours waiting for my car at the dealership on a Saturday. Regardless of the time, the real reason I will never go back is the way the “Service Advisor” handled my service. When he first called me over to go through the recommended work, it totaled over $1,200. I was floored and told him I am getting married in a few weeks and cannot afford to do all that work right now. I asked if they could come back and tell me what work was NEEDED vs what work was RECOMMENDED. After waiting another hour he came back and said basically the same thing, that this work was recommended. Not at all understanding what I asked or what I needed to know, and continuing to waste my time. I said it seemed crazy that I would have $1,200 of work to do. We looked at the line items together and he breezed through taking X off the list to save a few $, and said we can actually charge you ½ for Y, to save a few dollars. I think he thought that this was a help in trying to charge me less, but what it really made me feel was that they were trying to just charge me for literally anything they could. If you could charge me ½ price for that just because I said it was too expensive, what would be happening if I never asked, and you get away with charging me double when you didn’t have to. This lost all trust I had had with AutoNation, even through I had been going there for my Tacoma ever since moving to Colorado. This “Service Advisor” was fulfilling the cliché of sleezy mechanics who try to take advantage of people, and it ruined what had been a good relationship I had with AutoNation over the years. After we went through the list that he was adjusting on the fly, I asked him to rank for me what was the most important thing I should have done today. He said to replace the front and rear differential fluids. I told him that was fine and went down to wait another few hours. Sitting there and reflecting on what had just happened, it was hard not to feel like I should have told him to not do anything else, given the loss of trust. Whether it was the most important thing to do for my truck or not, I don’t know because I am not a mechanic, but it did not sit well that I lost complete trust in this person from giving me honest and trustworthy advice, and when I asked what thing he recommend I do most, he recommended the most important thing on the list that I’ve never heard of before. I left there feeling completely taken advantaged of by the “Service Advisor” and like they had no idea what even acceptable customer service was, let along good customer service. Again, I have been coming there ever since moving to Colorado years ago. This was the first time but it was bad enough I will never consider going back unless I heard from someone at the dealership who could explain to me why I should. On top of all of this, I have had no success in hearing back from anyone at the dealership about my feedback from the experience. 8/16 – I replied with a “rate your experience” email from the dealership, no response or reach out from anyone. 8/25 – After no response, I did an online chat interface with a representative (Samantha B.) providing the information about my complaint, and asked that they have someone reach out to me. I have a transcript of the exchange and she confirmed, ” 8/25/2023 8:15:27 AM Samantha B: I will share this now with our Customer Service Team and request for an appropriate member of our team contact you as soon as possible to discuss your experience with our service department in more detail.” Have never heard anything back from AutoNation Toyota. 8/28 Got an automated email from someone in the acquisition team about trying to buy my truck from me. Again, since I have not been able to hear back from ANYONE, I replied to her email and asked that she help point me in the right direction for who I can talk to in customer service. Radio silence, nothing. Which leads me to today, where I felt I had to try another avenue to provide this feedback, because me experience was that disappointing.