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Pl. advise!

I went to my Lexus dealer yesterday to get a full size spare fitted on my Ruby Red ES. I got a loaner for couple of hours (turns out that their service dept had no clue I was coming even though I had got a call from Parts dept and I had told them that I would come on Saturday morning and they had told me that spare is ready with matching Michilin). Anyway, I was inspecting the car after it was ready, and realized 2 small scratches on hood. I can swear that they were not present before! They are both small, 3 mm in length each, close to each other but they are deep into the paint and on a clean shiny ruby color, look WHITE!

I brought it to Service rep's attention and he gave me 2 options after saying that they worked only on the rear end of the car: patch it up immediately with matching color or talk to manager on Monday and he will inspect and decide what they can do(patch/paint the hood). I also caught hold of my salesman who is a really good guy and he advised to talk to manager on Monday. While I was waiting to talk to the sales guy, I could see that the service rep had a small meeting in which he had called all the service guys and they discussed something.... every service guy in the shop knew about this issue.

Could you guys give me any advise? I am really upset about the experience. I hate to have patches/repaint on my beautiful, spotless car for none of my mistake!

ES350Bob

Your subject post is an absolute as though you know for certain the dealer did this, yet your content leaves room for some doubt the dealer did.

It seems there would be no reason to fit a spare requiring anyone go near your hood in order to do it.

Decide whether a touch up will be OK or not. If not split the cost with them of repainting the hood since you don't know for certain they did it and since your displeasure with them over it might make them reluctantly repaint the hood just to quiet you down over it.

dshahs420

talk to the service manager tomorrow and be honest, tell him/her that to the best of your knowledge the scratch was not there and your opinion is that one of the mechanics may have somehow scratched it even though all the work was done at the rear end. Tell him that if he does this for you then you'd go out of your way to call his manager and thank him for having such a helpful staff. FYI, when you drop your car off at the service, do what i do, I take the mechanic/service manager to the car and have him do a 360 check of the exterior and we agree that the car should be examined at pick up and should be in the same condition when returned. Its saves a lot of guess work

Kaius88

same thing happened to me when they were installing my license plate. They agreed to fix it...but i didnt want them to repaint such a small area below the trunk lid. So they gave me some touchup paint and i applied it with a toothpick. Looks good enough no one notices.

amf1932

My Lexus dealer does it a little differently. Whenever you bring your car in for any kind of service procedure, they have a person who walks around your car, with a pad in hand that has illustrations of a car. He then scrutinizes every mark or ding that your car might have, and then he jots it down on the pad. You then have to sign a release that you agree to his findings, and then, and only then will they take your car in for service. They've been doing this for years, 'cause they probably got burned on a few occasions. Smart!!

cocopops

iTrader: (1)

yeah.. alan, thats actually the way to do it most of the time. You had to do it whenever you go out and rent a car as well. If you are still paranoid, use your camera phone to snap a few shots when the service rep is by your side. That way once you see something physically different on your car when you pick it up, you also have something to show as proof.

Ingram4868

This procedure might be a Lexus recommended practice that is not mandatory but our dealer does the same thing, no matter what our appointment is for.

wdlugitch

LONGO LEXUS, in El Monte, CA, has done it for years.