

Dealer wanted $4000 for a new hybrid battery to my Camry. I fixed it for - ptaipale
http://imgur.com/gallery/j8Bcp

======
A_COMPUTER
Can I assume they knew they could check this and just figured they could take
him for a ride? Or are dealerships really that hands-off?

~~~
RickS
Dealerships are that hands off. In the same way that many smaller electronics
could be fixed with a $0.15 capacitor swap, but the guy behind the counter at
radioshack has no idea about the inner workings at such a fine level. The
company can't afford to hire, train, and retain employees with such a high
baseline level of competence.

Proprietary parts like this prevent the kind of general knowledge that
previously made mechanics more useful.

Nowadays a code tells them what's broken, a piece of software tells them what
part that is, and at what level to repair/replace it.

I had a similar experience when my Accord's speedometer broke. The dealership
considers the entire dash cluster a single unit for manufacturing purposes,
and wanted $700 for the bulk part.

The guy behind the counter showed me the software and explained the process
when I asked about why it was such an arbitrarily rigid decision.

$20 on craigslist and an hour with a screwdriver, I replaced the individual
component with a salvage part.

~~~
kw71
Lots of third parties have sprung up offering services for situations where
official support is too expensive or not available on a legacy product.
Probably more visible and known to most of us are the people who carry out
repairs on mobile devices such as replacing screens and usb ports.

I like that this fellow publicized his experience this way because it's spread
around virally. For me, it seems like robbery when I have to pay for something
I could otherwise DIY because I don't possess some small knowledge like a
procedure or drawing.

~~~
ptaipale
Indeed. I was about to say that you can't get a Haynes manual for Toyota
Prius, but yes, there is one! [0]

However, the Haynes manual for Camry says it does not cover the hybrid models.
[1]

[0]
[http://www.haynes.com/products/productID/518](http://www.haynes.com/products/productID/518)

[1]
[http://www.haynes.com/products/productID/682](http://www.haynes.com/products/productID/682)

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funkwyrm
Wild to see imgur becoming a blog platform.

~~~
wodenokoto
Having the imgur URL will really blow up your karma on reddit. People there
consider imgur to be fast and reliable in delivering pictures, and posts imgur
are expected to be focused on images with perhaps short explanatory texts.

Most blogs are focused on text with some images.

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ehvatum
Very nice. Perhaps this info will reach the stealerships, allowing them to
clean high voltage battery contacts when that is all that's needed, rather
than replacing the entire...

bwahahahahahahahaha

~~~
Terretta
They'll clean it up this way, but still charge for the replacement. Profit!

~~~
rgarrett88
That would be illegal. What they will do though is offer you a discounted
refurbished battery from the last car that came in for $3,000 and take yours.
Then the cycle repeats.

