I have an 09 Ram 1500. 3 days ago I heard a loud knocking within the dash. I realized it's a door in the ductwork which controls where the air flows to. It's doing its own thing and air is coming out wherever it wants. I had a love/hate relationship with this dealerships service dept. I was told by a new service writer, ""we have new management and a new way of doing things"". I came back and was using them again for almost the past year until now. I called that writer, he explained what is was, an actuator has failed. There are 4 total. It would be base labor of $950.00 to dismantle and replace dash after replacing all 4 actuators as you have to take it apart anyway so, @ $30.00 an actuator I'd be crazy not to replace all 4 @ $1100.00. I do agree with that however, it sounded like it was right behind the cup holders. I went to Google, in 2 minutes I knew how to get back there and it took me 10 to get to two actuators. I know there's two I can't get to from here but there working fine for now. I turned on the truck and the plugged the AC plugs back in and identified the actuator. Hey, I'm no dummy, I'm replacing both but I want to know which one is bad anyway. I called the parts dept @DD and they had them in stock-$54.00 total. Off I went. Got the new ones, installed, put it back together within 30 minutes and saved $1046.00. I'm a happy camper. I called the service writer back and his comments were, I was giving you the worse case scenario. BS,,,,you didn't give me any other scenarios or lights at the end of the tunnel or hey""there's a slight chance it may only cost $200.00"". Nooooooo, in my opinion they were going to hose me once again. I told him, you were going to keep it a day, spend 30 minutes fixing it and charge me $1100.00 otherwise, they would have started with a slight glimmer of hope of a cheaper repair in the beginning.
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