Bought A Used $5,000 Toyota Highlander, Got A $9,000 Repair Bill

Whether you tend to own new or used cars, the price of keeping and maintaining those vehicles appears to be going up. One Toyota Highlander owner found this out the hard way after buying a 2001 model with just over 100,000 miles (160,000 km). A trip to the shop for what they thought would be minor repairs resulted in a $8,913 estimate.

According to their post on Reddit, it all began with a seemingly reasonable $5,000 purchase of the Toyota SUV last month. Then about a week ago, they noticed something “weird on the front driver side around the wheel,” that they could feel and hear. Like any responsible car owner, they took it to the shop. Then, the shocking part happened.

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The repair estimate quickly spiraled into an extensive list of recommended work. Right off the bat, the shop included new shocks and struts for all four corners. While replacing the front or rear pairs together is fairly standard practice, doing all four at once might be overkill, unless they were truly shot. If the front ones are worn, it’s fair to assume the rears aren’t far behind, but that alone doesn’t justify the massive price tag.

Then, the shop added new lower control arms and sway bar end links for the front of the Highlander. It’s certainly plausible that these contribute to whatever the sound is. Beyond those items, it seems that the mechanic is also tacking on whatever else the vehicle might need and that list is a touch more suspect.

$212 For Mounting New Tires

For starters, they wanted $212.24 to mount and balance tires that they’d also like to sell the customer for $611 before adding another $100 for a tire protection plan. Having run a wheel and tire shop for years, I can tell you that most shops will mount and balance for free if you buy the tires from them. Why this shop is so drastically different I can’t say.

Things got even stranger when they listed an alignment estimate—twice. They also include a battery replacement and an $89 electrical test service where they clean out the battery tray and clean off the battery terminals. All of this somewhat pales in comparison to the $1,158 they’d like to replace the rear brakes, do a brake fluid flush, and “clean all oil after oil leak repair.”

It’s worth noting that, as some have pointed out in the comment section, the shop might just be doing its due diligence to a degree. If we ignore the pricing, it does seem as though the mechanic is trying to address what the tech sees as potential causes or contributing factors to the customer’s complaint and additional safety concerns. Hopefully, they’ll get a second opinion, something plenty of people online have already suggested.

$8K+ worth of repairs on a $5K car I just bought?? Seems like a scam…
byu/kisses215 inMechanicAdvice