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Today was 50,000 mile car maintenance day. I?? one of those people that don?? try to pretend I know everything about cars, so I go to the car dealership for maintenance etc. So at 9:00am today, I get to the dealership and do the usual (give them keys, sit and wait forever). After an hour or so, they give me a call explaining to me that there are a few things I need to change/replace. For those that are familiar, you probably know how expensive this can get but here?? the list I was told that needed fixed right away:

Total car parts and labor charge: $442.74!!!

Alternate choice to save money

Reluctantly, I said yes and went to find my fianc? who came to pick me up. When I told her the story, she quickly told me that I could just find an auto repair shop to replace the parts for half the price! I ran back in and asked the service people to stop what they were doing (luckily they were slow and didn?? even start anything yet). We called a repair shop that?? close by and had done some repair work for my girlfriend. After speaking to them, they told me the prices will be:

Total car parts and labor charge: $200 tax included! To add to the savings, he said $180 including tax was okay when I asked him since I?? doing all three at the same time.

Car dealership scam

So after some time, the repair shop told me that I didn?? really need to change the transmission fluid. He mentioned that since my car is manual transmission, I do not need to change the fluid until maybe 90,000 ??100,000 miles. Hmm. Standard dealership scam, another $40 saved.

How much I saved today

So I ended up paying $140, which means I saved $302.74 today just because my girlfriend stopped me from overpaying the car dealership!

For those that still get scammed by car dealerships, I suggest getting the inspection checked, and then asking the repair shops to do the actual replacement. You can probably save more money by asking oil change specialty shops (like Jiffy Lube) to do the inspection and then going to the repair shops to do the actual replacement. The ultimate money saving approach is obviously doing everything yourself but it is only for those that know exactly what they are doing. For the others (like me), stick with a hybrid approach. I’m quite happy of what I accomplished today. Hopefully this will benefit you too.