Don’t just listen to us. Read about the experience our long time client had when her daughter went to a dealership.

“My daughter moved out of state with her new Toyota and was using a dealership for her maintenance – oil changes and 10,000 mile check-ups. It was all going okay until her service contract ran out.

“Here is the text she got from the Dealership’s Service Manager when she went in for her 60,000 service:

Hey Emma, it’s Billy with Toyota.
Here are the recommended preventative maintenances for your RAV4:

ENGINE COOLANT FLUSH
HYBRID COOLANT FLUSH
BRAKE FLUID FLUSH
TRANSMISSION FLUID FLUSH
THROTTLE BODY DECARBONIZATION SERVICE
WHEEL ALIGNMENT

“WTAF? This seemed extreme to me. I checked with my pals at Japanese Auto Service. Doc and Matt looked up the required services for my daughter’s car model and year. None of these services are recommended at 60,000 miles unless there is some indication that the fluids are dirty. It seemed suspicious that ALL the fluids would be dirty. When questioned, Billy, the Service Manager, said,

“The fluids need to be changed as it looks like they are the same fluids since you first got the car.”

“Matt and Doc told me that, for this particular model and year, we might want to flush the engine coolant at 100,000 miles but the other fluids don’t normally need to get flushed unless there is some kind of leakage.

“And the car runs great – no indication that an alignment is needed.

The dealership wanted to charge my kid for about $1400 in “preventive maintenance” that absolutely wasn’t needed. She doesn’t have that kind of money to throw away. Most of us don’t.

“I was about her age when I moved to Wheat Ridge and found Japanese Auto Service. That was the end of being taken for a ride by dealers and creepy dishonest mechanics.

“When I go to Japanese Auto Service, I know they are only going to recommend doing work if it really needs to be done. And since I have been going there, all my cars run great. The only time I have ever gotten a bill as high as the dealer’s “preventive maintenance” bill was when there was something big that actually needed to be fixed. You know, like a transmission. A clutch.

“Thank you, Japanese Auto Service, for treating me and all your customers fairly.”

— N.M., Broomfield

We here at Japanese Auto Service wholeheartedly agree that preventive maintenance is important and we follow the factory service recommendations for your car’s model and year. You can usually find these service recommendations in your car’s manual or by Googling. Unless the dealer has added on specific equipment that affects these recommendations, extra services are not necessary.