DARCARS Toyota/Scion of Frederick

unknown

We were told the cabin filter and air filter needed to be replaced yet they were replaced less than a week ago. This is the third time this has happened at the dealership. Once with tires on another vehicle and once with brakes on another cehicle. We put our trust in our own mechanic.

I bought a little accessories stuff. One thing that I like is that I can arrange to have a loaner car for the period of time they have my Lexus. I have to schedule that so they have a car available and I have a small SUV and they always give me another SUV that's pretty much the same car and they don't charge me for it. They get the work done quickly and wash the car for me. Overall, I would give them an A, although I hate to do that with a dealership. I don't trust dealerships usually, but they've been good. I've been pleasantly surprised. The pricing is actually better than I thought it might be because I priced some of the services that were done internally against some other providers and they were always a little bit cheaper with that but not when it came to body work because there was a little bump on my bumper, and their prices were higher in that so I went with another company for that.

Generally this dealer provides excellent service, but watch out for their recommendations for work needed. I have take our Toyota to this dealer for 11 years.  It has taken me a while to figure out that I have to question their reasons. For example they suggested wheel realignment.  I asked why and they said they recommend one every year.  We drive this car about 5,000 miles a year.  A wheel alignment one year later was NOT required..  I finally decided to make my appointments with the repair manager, and have pointed out that I only want necessary services.  He has served me well

Professional, easy to communicate with, and punctual, but pricey.

I dropped the car off on the day I was scheduled.  DARCARS maintenance techs changed the oil, rotated the tires, and completed the scheduled maintenance check list.  They returned my vehicle as soon as they completed their work.  I will return to DARCARS for the 20K and 25K mile service.  After that I will most likely not use them again.  The reason why I will not use them again is because their service writers are paid on commission.  If they can sell you unneeded service the service writer will make more money.  I see this as a serious conflict of interest.

The transaction went perfectly and I am delighted.
1)  Priced vehicles across Toyota dealers in the mid-Atlantic region via Internet using e-mail
2)  Darcars Toyota Frederick had the exact truck, color, options and PRICE that I wanted to pay based on my research
3)  Dennis Dawson, the salesman, was professional, courteous and polite throughout.   Service with a smile
4)  Darcars was exact in the price they gave me in e-mail for what I was going to pay "out the door"
5)  We went to the dealership, test drove the truck, did the financing, and was out the door in 90 minutes!!!
 I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a new or used Toyota vehicle.
Contrast this with our  experience at Joyce Koons Honda of Manassas 45 days previously where it was like being in a gulag for 5 1/2 hours of torture with deceitful sales people.  See my Joyce Koons Honda review for the gruesome details.

It’s a pretty good service. I guess they’re reliable. They do what they say they’re gonna do and at a decent price. I’ve never had a problem with them.

Jessie Torreyson, the finance manager, was who I dealt with for the sales and finance. Jason Vaughn was my sales consultant and James Higgins was the finance director. They all get A's across the board.  I just got the most pleasant and most considerate service from the time I got there to the time I left. I'd recommend them to anyone who wants to get a used or new car.  I'd use them again in the future as well.

We got our money back from them though it took forever. We will never use them again.

They are friendly and fast.  However, the quote that they gave me was for $2000 worth of things that they felt that I needed done including getting a serpentine belt replaced.  The next mechanic that I took my car to, it turned out that a few months later I had a bad starter which wasn’t on their list.  When I showed them the list of things that were wrong and when I asked them to check out my serpentine belt, they looked as if like they didn’t know why I needed to check the serpentine belt and that my serpentine belt was fine.  I don’t know if they were trying to nickel and dime me because they were a dealership.  I was recommended to them by a teacher friend whose brother worked there, so that is why I took my car there.  They charged me a fair price for what they did for my car, but I was kind of flabbergasted as they wanted me to spend way more on stuff that I didn’t actually need to spend money on.

I took my Prius in for routine maintenance and was quoted an estimate of $109. A few hours later the actual price came to $1,116.
Between those two numbers, their service writer phoned me to say that the mechanic had found my front brakes were bad and needed new rotors and pads. I felt confident authorizing them to proceed because I could check the truth of their diagnosis by examining the old rotors and pads.
When I arrived to get my car, they said they didn't have the old rotors and pads. A service writer told me that it would have been "a good idea" to keep them, but that they didn't do that.
This is the first time in more than 50 years of having auto maintenance work done that the old parts were not saved. Typically they are  placed on the back seat floor or in the trunk.
Thus I have no way to verify the honesty of Darcars work. Their policy is to hide the evidence of their honesty (or dishonesty) from their customers.
If you cannot avoid using Darcars, insist up front that you want the old parts and will examine them yourself or take them to another mechanic for analysis.

It costs less because I took their contract. When I walk in they see who the customer is. They don't go to my husband just because he is a man. They come down with their price when I tell them that I can get a better price. Their price is not the lowest, but my overall experience with them was not bad at all. They have been doing a good job. I have had my car for five years now and I have not had any problem. They have always been professional.

They do a nice job of giving you written reports of what they recommend after they service your vehicle. You feel like you always understand what is going on when you go in there.  When they fix something or do maintenance on my vehicles, it is always done well and I don't ever have any follow up issues. The only complaint that I have with this service provider is a business relationship that they have with an oil and additive company, BG, and they are recommending these products and services. When I checked with Toyota they said that they do not endorse these products and that if you follow the Toyota recommendations and services then the car would not need these extra products to maintain it's performance.

Darcars Toyota has always done a good job at servicing my car. They are professional. The quality of their work is good. They are very responsive. I would continue to use them in the future.

Every time I go there, they phone me for feedback, so they seem very responsive. But there are two mistakes they made in the past that they once again made this time, so their responsiveness does not translate into fixing problems. First, when they rotated the tires, they inflated them to a pressure of 28 pounds apiece. The universal recommendation is to inflate tires to the manufacturer's recommended pressure, which is on the side of the driver's door. That says 35 front, 33 rear. Since they have made this mistake before, I checked the pressure before leaving the lot and returned to the service manager to ask them to fix the problem. They always then ask, "What pressure would like us to inflate the tires to?" Why are they even asking this question? Why don't they know the answer? It has nothing to do with customer preference! I said "35/33." I heard him call his technician to explain the problem and ask that the tires be inflated to 32. I repeated, "35/33." The technician promptly took the car back to fix the problem and returned it to me with the assurance that it was 35/33. I checked again, and it was 32 all around. Apparently they have gauges pre-set to certain levels that cannot be overridden. Second, when I was there a few months ago, the tecnicians turned off the climate-control system while working on the car and never put it back on. When I departed in a driving rainstorm, I pressed the defrost button, which automatically adjusts several settings at once to optimize defrosting. Since I never turn the system off myself, I was not prepared for what happened. I pulled out onto a busy street and the windows completely fogged up. This was a dangerous situation! I limped back into the dealership to complain, and they turned it back on. This time, there was no rainstorm, but they once again turned the climate-control system off and did not put it back on.