another car rip-off

My car (Suzuki) had the “service engine soon” light come on at 160K miles. Went to the dealer, they charged me $300 plus for replacing the oxygen sensor. Drove about 50 miles, the light comes back on. Go back to the dealer, and they tell me that I need another $300 worth of sensors and a new thermostat. More than a little suspicious, and hugely pissed off, I paid it anyway - you guessed it - the light came on again after 16 miles. this time the dealer takes a few days, and tells me the “wrong” air filter was used (not by them, of course), and the flow was blocked - which caused the oxygen sensor alarm to come on again and generate the “service engine soon” light again.

The service manager assured me that this was all necessary, and that each one of the replaced components would cause the alarm. The blocked air filter was not “the” problem, just another problem making that light come on.

I suspect that the mechanic did not know what he was doing, forget to hit a reset button or something, and just replaced stuff at random. Finally he remembered the reset - but I still get charged. The air filter is just a cover.

How should I proceed?

I paid by credit card both times - they still have my car right now.

I have called to speak to the Suzuki service rep - but they haven’t called me back yet. Does the company rep represent the customers? Champion the dealers? Something in between?

Should I challange the charges when they show up on the credit card?

help!

I had one of these “service engine” lights on an old '78 Scirocco I used to have - the light actually read “EKG” or something, which was an abbreviation for some really long German word that I guess meant “Service Engine Soon”.

Anyway, after taking it in the first time it came on, the mechanic confessed to me that nothing was wrong - that light would come on every 30k miles FOR NO REASON other than to remind me that I probably should take my car in for service round about then. I bought one of those old car books (the kind with a picture of the make and model car that showed the outside, then an “invisible” hood that revealed the engine, wiring, etc) and found in the book how to take a pen and push to reset the switch so the light wouldn’t come back on.

Sounds like you have an older Suzuki there w/lots of miles on it, so I’d suggest finding one of those old books I mentioned and seeing if that light really has a mechanical reason for coming on or not - might help your case with getting your money back if there really was never a problem at all, other than your odometer setting it off…