I'm in the banking / finance business. As I said in my original post, I
believe that some type of compensation was due since it did take up some of
their time, but 86.00 is excessive to the point of robbery plus I thing they
could have reset the light for me and sent me on my way without all the
testing (since I told them what happened). 6000.00 doesn't seem like very
much to me for a piece of diagnostic equipment, but assuming your right,
that means that at those outragous prices, they could pay off the machine in
roughly 69 loose gas cap visits, and the rest is profit (not including labor
costs).

Something else I noticed was some type of organized labor logo on the
'customer satisfaction' letter I had in my car after the work was
performed..... that could be the full explanation right there, I don't
remember this being a Union shop in the past. I am told by some that the
dealerships have 'set costs' that they charge for things no matter how long
they actually take to perform, which means they probably 'estimate' that an
issue such as this takes 30 min to work on..... so they rip me a new one on
the 86.00 spend 15 minutes on it and move on to the next sucker and double
their profit per hour, etc. Sucks, but I'll chalk this one up to an
expensive lesson.




"Chip Stein" <chip@chipanddebby.com> wrote in message
news:5ddcea74.0408141701.6c65267a@posting.google.c om...
> > > Yes, I know, it was stupid to take it to the dealer and I have
> > > learned my lesson, but it still stings pretty bad. I am a huge Honda
> > > fan, but this has soured me a little.... funny thing is that we were
> > > going in to look at Odysseys at that dealership this weekend, not
> > > now.
> > >
> > > brian drake
> > > charlotte, nc
> >
> > --
>
> so what you are saying is that the tech's time and the dealerships
> time is worth nothing. the fact that you left your gas cap loose is
> not their problem, it's yours! and it should cost you. that piece of
> equipment they read your codes with is called the HDS and costs them
> about 6000.00. it has to get paid for. what line of work are you in
> by the way????
> Chip