The subject of this post is the issue with the fuel door. First, there is a mechanism where you have to pull a latch on the driver's side, which hopefully "opens" the fuel door on the passenger side. Then, if something fails in this operation, it is a two-person job to open it. Second, the "spring" is merely a bent piece of metal, that guess what happens after a short duration . . . it bends! Thus, the door remains locked, or, unsprung, and cannot be open unless you resort to the previously mentioned two-person operation. Very unsafe to get stranded and unable to fill the gas tank because the fuel door refuses to open.
For some reason I felt the need to give Subaru a chance to come through and took this problem into the dealer to see if they could deal with it. I knew what the problem was, the piece of shit piece of metal. Thus, if they could/would fix this without trying to steal from me, maybe I could let them handle larger issues. Alas, not so much. The piece was less than $5 (see below), but they tried to charge me $50. This unexpected charge was after a $0 promise on the diagnostics and a $0 promise on the labor IF it was the spring. Should only be a "couple of bucks". Then, they went ahead and did the labor without confirmation from me. If they would have told me it was $50 I would have told them no because we all know that it was a $5 piece.
In the end I went in, pitched a bitch because they performed work without my authorization after I had been promised no cost on labor and "a couple bucks" on the shit part that they only charged me for the part. Great.
The particular part from my invoice is a Spring Flap #57651AG00B. Or, you could just bend the spring back. I would recommend not buying a Subaru.
