Should you have to pay for a diagnosis at the dealership if you already know what the problem is?
Asked by Carollynne Sep 19, 2016 at 08:04 AM about the 2011 Ford Fusion SEL
Question type: Maintenance & Repair
Although not a recall..the problem of stalling while driving on Ford Fusions is
know to be the Throttle Assembly on other posts. Ford wants to charge over
$100 for a code diagnosis when the problem that I am having is exactly the
same as those that are described on the Guru site.
3 Answers
This is how they repair shop of dealer pays for their expensive diagnosis equipment. It also pays for their tech to spend time figure out what is causing the codes in the first place. Not all codes mean what they say. For example : you might have an oxygen sensor code telling you to replace the oxygen sensor when in fact their is a leak in the exhaust system causing the oxygen sensor to read it incorrectly
Ford wanting to charge you for diagnostic time is fair.
Keep in mind this isn't Ford, it's a Ford dealership. Separate entities (dealerships are privately owned). Ford issues technical service bulletins (TSBs) to dealerships and the public at large to technicians help quickly diagnose a problem. But the dealership still needs to run a diagnostic to determine just what the problem is.