re: Who’s got some dealership service stories?

Couple years ago my wife’s Infiniti QX60 battery was dead in our garage one morning. I went to Walmart and bought a battery and changed it and it started fine. Next day my wife tells me that her rear lift gate won’t open at all. There’s three different ways to open it. A button on the dash, with the key fob, or a button on the lift gate. None of them worked. I found online how to take the cover off the inside and manually open it but that required crawling in the back.

So my wife calls the Infiniti dealership here in Lafayette and makes an appointment. I take it there a couple days later and let her use my truck. I tell the service manager how it stopped working after I changed the battery and that I was positive that it was the module that controls the lift gate actuator/lock and not the actuator itself as it had never happened before.

An hour later he comes back and tells me it’s the lift gate actuator/lock that is out and needs to be changed. Over $600. I tell him it’s not the actuator and decline their offer. Had to pay $100 for their “diagnosis” but at least they washed it.

I went home, found the QX60 service manual online and located the module. I had to remove the whole third row seats and panels to get to it. Found the module in the side wall and unplugged it and removed it to inspect it. Looked fine, so I plugged it back in, and voilà, the lift gate worked again.

So these dumbfricks would have charged me over 600 bucks to change a part that was working and not fixed the problem. Then they would have probably replaced the lift gate module instead of just unplugging and plugging it back in and charged me about $1,000 for that.

frick dealership service centers for anything except free warranty services. I will never ever bring a vehicle to them.