I bought a 2000 Dodge Durango in August of 2000, and I've been very happy with it.

When I had about 15K miles on it, the check engine light came on and stayed on. I took it into the dealer and had them look at it --under warranty-- and it was the O2 sensor. They replaced it and I was only out about an hour and a half of my life waiting.

Fast forward to Friday. I have had an intermittent check engine light again for a month or so, but was told that it's quite often from the gas cap not being on tight. Since it was intermittent, I figured that I just wasn't being consistent in cranking the gas cap down tight everytime.

At any rate, Friday I took it in for a state inspection, and it failed because --the O2 sensor is bad! *$^#)$)$^!!! They even gave me a printout showing the specific readout that indicates the bad O2 sensor.

I took it into the dealer this morning and was waiting outside when they rolled up the service bay doors at 0700, and of course the mileage puts it just out of warranty. I showed the service writer the printout from the inspection station as well as the invoice for the first O2 sensor they had replaced for me. Then I sat in the waiting room and watched my truck sit there for a half hour before they rolled it into the service bay. About fifteen minutes later the service guy walks up and informs me that I have a bad O2 sensor. [:/] He informs me that the price of the sensor alone is $170.00 and asks me if I’d like them to go ahead and put the new one in. I say do it, since my inspection expired on the 31st of May and I have five days grace period with a failed inspection printout.

A half hour or so later my truck is ready, and I paid $359.03 for the job. That’s two hours labor at $80 per, plus the part, plus tax. For my second O2 sensor in 40K miles. I looked on the invoice and it shows that they received my truck at 0706 and returned it to me at 0903, but of course the 0706 time is when the service writer wrote up the sheet on it, not when the mechanic started working on it.

I just feel like I got totally bent over and dry fucked on this deal, and I’m considering writing a letter to somebody at Dodge, and would include a mention of the fact that my previous truck, a 1995 Toyota 4Runner never had an O2 sensor  --or anything else—go bad in five years and 108,000 miles.

What say you all? Did I get boned or does my experience sound like a square deal?

welcome to the world of dodge, better get a good set of wrenches dude

[:(] Dude you got screwed on the labor. The problem with dealerships is that they have a map on how long each repair should take. They charge based on that and go from there.

Example:

On my Camaro. The stated time for a tune up is 4hrs. You have to partially drop the engine to get to the back plugs. I was quoted $250 for a tune up. That included the Bosch Platinum plugs and Bosch wires.

I took it to Goodyear where there labor states that it should take 2.5hrs to do the job. I was charged with tax $183