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Tag: vehicle maintenance

  • Should you take your vehicle to a car repair shop or a dealership? – MoneySense

    Should you take your vehicle to a car repair shop or a dealership? – MoneySense

    The dealership: Pros and cons

    If your vehicle has a problem that’s covered by the warranty, the dealership is your best  option for repair. Dealership service staff are highly familiar with your vehicle, have completed factory-approved training on it, and have access to its service records, warranty history, repairs, recalls, software updates and a network of other dealerships to consult if needed. Dealerships can also easily access manufacturer-provided data and resources to help effect speedy repairs, even for complex issues.

    Having your car serviced at its dealership helps reduce the chances of certain warranty-related issues, which we’ll dive into later. It also helps ensure your car or truck is up to date on all recalls and software updates, which help it deliver a safer, fully optimized drive.

    Of course, you’re free to have your car maintained and serviced wherever you like. Maybe your favourite tire shop handles your seasonal tire change-overs, and you have your oil changed or suspension repaired at a shop near work over your lunch hour. These relatively low-cost maintenance and repair services (and others including brake jobs, air filter changes and exhaust system repair) are widely available at non-dealership repair shops as well, and may be more convenient. 

    Just remember that, depending on the servicing required, the dealership may be your best or only option. For example, new cars are increasingly built with electronics and systems that require special training and equipment that may only be available at a dealership.

    Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik

    My typical advice to friends and family is to have their vehicle serviced in a dealership setting as often as possible while it’s under warranty, any time a transmission fluid change is required, for any electronics-related trouble, and for any major servicing of an electric vehicle (EV) or hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), and especially for servicing related to its powertrain or electronics. (More on this below.)

    Plus, if you service and repair your vehicle exclusively at the dealership, you could benefit from improved resale value and an easier, faster sale down the line—which saves you time and money. That’s because you’ll be able to advertise your car as “dealer-serviced with all records,” which gives potential buyers added peace of mind that servicing, repairs and updates are current, warranty-compatible and backed by the vehicle’s dealer network.

    In summary, while you don’t have to service your new vehicle entirely under the dealership’s roof, doing so can help streamline things and save you time. Just remember: If you suspect a warranty-covered problem, contact your dealership first.

    PROS

    • Better access to parts
    • Able to service complex and specialty models
    • All required equipment, parts and training
    • Access to manufacturer resources and tech support 
    • 100% warranty-approved parts and labour

    CONS

    • Often pricier than other options

    Justin Pritchard

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  • How Canadians can save money on gas, grocery, cellphone and other home bills – MoneySense

    How Canadians can save money on gas, grocery, cellphone and other home bills – MoneySense

    Electricity and hydro savings tip: Are the lights on?

    You already turn off the lights when you leave a room or turn down the thermostat at night, right? In addition to that, Barry Walker, residential business development manager for efficiencyns.ca, says to check lightbulb packaging for LED wattage: “For example, it may read seven watts LED and say it’s equivalent to 60 watts of an incandescent light. So you’re only using a fraction of the energy to get the same amount of light.” He says that can save you 25% of the cost of lighting on your electricity bill. 

    Other cheap and cheerful ways to save on lighting and other energy costs: Buy motion sensors, smart power bars and electrical timers. “These are small things, but they’re inexpensive and they will pay for themselves very, very quickly.”

    Electricity and hydro savings tip: Consider a heat pump

    The biggest cost on Candians’ electricity bills is home heating, and heat pumps are becoming popular among Canadians because of government incentives to help with the costs. Walker installed a heat pump 20 years ago to replace his oil and electric heating in his 60-plus-year-old home in Halifax. “I’m a good old Scotsman and I kept every bill—my total energy costs dropped 40%,” he says. “I use thermal storage for my backup, and that heat pump is paying for itself three-fold now.” 

    Water savings tip: Get efficient 

    Plus, the heat pump can help save on the second biggest cost on your electricity: hot water. “Your payback will depend largely on the volume of hot water your household uses,” Walker says. “If you’ve got teenagers taking three showers a day, then the payback on that heat pump hot water tank will be fairly quick.” If a heat pump is too big of a commitment, you can opt for a more energy efficient hot water heater (even if you rent yours), says Walker. 

    Also, use cold water detergent to wash clothes and check for leaky taps. If you pay for municipal water, where you pay based on how much you use, that could be a sinkful of money a day going down the drain, he says. 

    How to save on internet and cable bills: Renegotiate service agreements

    Renegotiate or bundle internet and cable services, and examine your home insurance and auto insurance, suggests Scorgie. Also talk about usage, too. You might be in the wrong plan, as things have changed since 2020, and you might not need as much as you did during the lockdowns. Keehn says: “That’s hundreds of dollars a year. People may say, ‘But I’m going to have to sit on hold with the phone company for hours.’ Maybe you will, but just sit on hold while you’re watching Netflix,” she suggests. (Speaking of Netflix, here are the best streaming services in Canada.)

    How to save on cell phone bills: Check your bill and cut what you don’t need

    Check your phone bill: Has a signup bonus promotion expired because you forgot to renew it, resulting in higher fees? Are you paying for directory listings you don’t use? Those charges add up, notes Keehn. Also, look into family plans and getting rid of services you don’t use, like international calls for example. Also, in your settings, check for the apps that are running in the background, which can eat up a ton of data unknowingly when you’re out and about not connected to wifi. 

    How to save on car expenses and maintenance

    We don’t need to tell you that owning a vehicle is expensive. There’s maintenance, gas and more.

    Wendy Helfenbaum

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  • Repairing a CVT transmission failure on a Toyota C-HR – MoneySense

    Repairing a CVT transmission failure on a Toyota C-HR – MoneySense

    1. The owner of a 2018 C-HR that experienced a failure at just over 100,000 kilometres and five years received an estimate of $10,000 to replace the transmission with a new one. After he complained, the repair cost was reduced to $4,000, with Toyota Canada and the dealer making up the difference.
    2. Toyota Canada rejected a claim for a transmission failure at 138,000 kilometres on a 2019 C-HR; the Montreal-area dealer estimated the repair at slightly over $10,000.

    An alternative to replacing the transmission: A less expensive repair

    If no help is forthcoming, an alternative may be to find a used transmission from a wrecked C-HR and have it installed, for a final price in the range of $4,000 to $5,000. The risk: a replacement used transmission may well develop the same defect as your original transmission over time—that’s a risky bet if you intend to hang on to your C-HR for many more years.

    A third way to fix a CH-R transmission

    I checked with Alain Groulx, a transmission expert who has helped many members of the APA resolve transmission failures. Here’s his take on the transmission failure in your C-HR:

    “Based on the information provided, it seems to be an issue with defective bearings inside the transmission. It’s a shame that dealers are recommending replacing the entire transmission at the customer’s expense instead of trying to repair it. By replacing a complete transmission, the warranty is carried by the manufacturer, so there is less risk for the dealer, but it comes at a heavy price to the customer.

    “A good transmission rebuilder may be able to open and repair the transmission. We had similar issues with the Jeep Patriot that used a CVT transmission on some models. The differential carrier bearings experienced many failures at low mileages; we were able to source and replace the bearings at a fraction of the cost of a new transmission.

    “If this is a recurring problem, Toyota could make a bearing set available as a recommended repair kit. That has the potential to drop the repair price to about $3,000, if the problem is picked up early before a complete bearing failure ruins other components inside the transmission. Sometimes bearings are available from independent suppliers like General Bearing Service (GBS) or similar suppliers. In order to know if they are available in the aftermarket, the transmission would have to be dismantled to get the part number on the defective bearing. In many cases, the bearing is made exclusively for the manufacturer and is not available unless the automaker offers it as a replacement part independently of a complete transmission.”

    “Broken telephone” effect: Documenting your transmission failure complaint to prepare a claim

    Information sometimes gets lost in translation when a customer reports a problem. In your case, a suggestion to check for “a whine from the engine” may have been enough to throw the technician off the trail. Or the road test conducted during the warranty period was not done at sufficient speed or for enough time to elicit the noise you were hearing.

    Here are some steps you can take during the warranty period to improve the odds that issues with your vehicle will be addressed and avoid the “broken telephone” effect:

    1. Ensure your concerns are recorded accurately. Focus on symptoms over solutions, unless you are already familiar with the problem and its repair.
    2. If possible, identify a location on the vehicle to check more carefully, the speed, road conditions, warm/cold engine and other factors that appear relevant.
    3. Use your cellphone to capture intermittent problems that magically seem to disappear when you take your vehicle in for service. For example, record abnormal sounds that come and go, and take photos of warning lights that come on temporarily.
    4. Obtain copies of repair orders, even for no-charge inspections, and retain them.

    In my experience, helping consumers with resolving complaints, you can go back about a year relatively successfully for a problem that was reported during the warranty period but wasn’t addressed. To do that, having complete service records will improve your chances of a favourable outcome significantly.

    Making your case if your claim is rejected

    A transmission, which is a lifetime component of a vehicle, should last for much more than six years or 110,000 kilometres, as long as it’s maintained and isn’t abused. Almost all the automakers that introduced CVT transmissions eventually extended the warranties on some of them past the original “five-year, 100,000-km” powertrain warranty to address durability concerns.

    If Toyota Canada isn’t forthcoming with assistance, Ontario lawyer Michael Turk says you could sue the manufacturer, basing your claim on the implied warranty of fitness under the province’s Sale of Goods Act:

    You will need to obtain an expert report from a third party, typically a mechanic or transmission expert who will be able to confirm that the bearing is the cause of the failure, and that the failure occurred as a result of a manufacturer’s defect in the transmission. With the expert’s report in hand, your next step is to file a claim in the Small Claims Court for the cost of repair and any additional costs you have incurred as a result of the loss of use of the vehicle arising form the transmission failure. You could also argue that the vehicle exhibited problems with the transmission while it was still under the manufacturer’s original warranty and this was brought to the attention of the dealer at the 88,000-kilometre service while still under warranty. Lastly, when choosing an expert, it is important for the expert to be able to be qualified by the Court as an expert and that your expert is willing to come to court and testify on your behalf. This process has become easier and less disruptive to those who provide expert evidence as the courts have transitioned to a virtual format.

    Given that the complaints received to date are serious, I invite other Toyota C-HR owners with an experience to share about their vehicle’s transmission to contact the APA. This will help the association identify a pattern of failures and determine what actions Toyota Canada is taking to address complaints.

    George Iny

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