Complaint Review: McInerney Toyota - Clinton Township Michigan

Please do not let yourself of your loved one go to this dealership for service because they will rip you off in cold blood without blinking an eye.  My ill-advised grandmother that only trusts dealerships to maintain her '99 Camry took her car in to diagnose a brake hissing noise.  The dealership looked it over and told her she needed to replace the power brake booster with a new part to the tune of $960 for just that part, plus $200 in labor to install it.  On a car that is worth $5000.  Yes, the actual list price for this part is actually $960 for whatever asinine reasons and they act like this is completely normal for an old lady to pay.

Of course my grandmother not knowing any better agreed pay the dealer to order the part and bring her car back in after the part arrives.  Then she tells me afterward how much it was going to cost and then I feel sick for her.  After researching the issue on the internet, the hissing can be related to the brake booster, however the common failure modes are typically a vacuum line leak or a gasket failure between the brake booster and master cylinder.  When I talked to the service department, they do not even consider trying to fix the problem with the $2 gasket and will only try to fix the problem with the $1000 part.  They told me they saw the booster leaking, but wouldn't tell me where from.  If it is leaking at the attachment point to master cylinder, then I would logically believe that the gasket has failed.

Yes the brake booster can still be at issue and need to be replaced, however boosters are typically much more robust parts than the gasket or vacuum connections and so it is less likely the part that needs to be replaced.  In either case, my issue with this dealer is that they don't even consider the cheaper fixes first or offer to replace the part with a professionally remanufactured part that can be bought for as cheap as $150.  In fact, the parts department acted like remanufactured parts don't even exist unless some private party had a hobby to rebuild a brake booster by hand and sell them on craigslist.  Yeah, I'm sure the part I can go to O'Reilly Auto Parts and buy off their shelf right now is rebuilt by some Joe Schmo in his garage.

After all of this, I made my grandmother go back to the dealer the next morning and cancel the order on the expensive brake booster part.  No surprise, they "have" to charge her a 20% restocking fee for the part she hasn't even gotten to see yet.... yeah that's $200 they had charged her with the holidays coming up to have to put a part back on the shelf... Congratulations scumbag dealership, you got your $200 from her that you were going to make anyway from the ridiculously priced new brake booster.

I hope this teaches my grandmother that not even dealerships can be trusted, or at least call me before agreeing to swipe her card for such expensive parts.  We are going to find her a nice little shop that will happily work on her car and treat her like a normal person that won't have to pay outlandish prices to keep her vehicle on the road.

So please do not let your loved ones get their cars fixed from McInerney Toyota on Gratiot in Clinton Township.