Woman Quoted $7,500 For Land Rover Part. Then She Has Her Dad Call The Dealership And Ask For A Price Check

A repair quote that varies by thousands of dollars depending on who is doing the asking can turn a customer into a crusader. That’s what happened to a Texas woman who says her Land Rover dealership quoted her $7,500 for a part, then quoted her father $2,500 for the same job when he called to check.

Ashlee (@findingashlee) laid out the saga in a three-and-a-half-minute TikTok. She opens by establishing that she is not a soft target.

"I grew up in a car dealership. My dad owned car dealerships for 52 years," she says, adding that she rebuilt the engine in her first car, a 1973 Corvette Stingray, at age 12. Her caption names the dealer and accuses it of "gender pricing and selling defective tires."

The Price Differential

About two years ago, Ashlee says, she took her 2013 Range Rover, then near 100,000 miles, to Land Rover Austin for what she calls a small oil drip. The dealer quoted $7,500 for a part, she says, a figure that struck her as way too high. She called her father, who phoned the dealership through a different service writer and asked what the same pump would cost, she says.

According to Ashlee, he was quoted $2,500. She says the dealer honored the lower price once she brought it up.

The exchange she leads with is what she says the general manager told her when she came into his office to complain: "Sweetie, why don't you call your daddy, and he can explain to you how cars work." Ashlee says she filed a formal complaint with Land Rover USA, was told she was not the first, and received a $1,000 credit for the dealership by way of apology.

She put that $1,000 toward four new tires in May 2024. This month, she says, the Range Rover started shaking violently and a tire kept going flat.

Ashlee took it to Discount Tire, which she praised, and says a technician scanning the tires found two that were unsafe: one with a bulge, one with the tread separating to the point that the internal steel was showing, plus one that read as four years old.

Ashlee's conclusion is that the dealership sold her aged or defective tires. She says the dealer has not returned her calls, and she has filed a second complaint.

Gender And Car Repair Prices

Ashlee's gender-pricing accusation lines up with a well-known field experiment. Kellogg and Northwestern researchers had callers request repair quotes and found that women who appeared uninformed about the market price were quoted more than men, while women who signaled they knew the going rate got comparable numbers. Ashlee signaled that knowledge from a lifetime in the business, and still describes being brushed off.

The tire complaint carries a safety dimension. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says tires grow more likely to fail as they age, and that some vehicle and tire makers recommend replacing them at six to 10 years old regardless of tread wear.

The agency singles out low-mileage drivers as an overlooked risk group. Their tires can age out before the tread ever wears down.

Ashlee told a commenter she drives about 15,000 miles every five years. Tire age is not guesswork: the last four digits of the DOT code on the sidewall give the week and year a tire was built, which is how the shop pegged one of hers at four years old. NHTSA lists bulges among the signs a tire should come out of service, and safety researchers have separately tied aged tires to tread and belt separations behind loss-of-control and rollover crashes.

By the agency's count, tire-related crashes killed 511 people in 2024.

"When I Walk In And See No Women, I Just Leave."

Several women described similar treatment at dealerships.

"I went to pick up a part I ordered from Honda, they told me the nuts/bolts would cost an additional $125. My dad walked in the next day and was handed the hardware for free," wrote Becki Faymon.

Another commenter, anniesim2222, said she "got rid of my Land Rover for that reason." Lupita_011235 said she now seeks out female tradespeople: "When I walk in and see no women, I just leave."

Asked about mileage, Ashlee said the tires had seen light use. "I have driven 15k in 5 years. I work from home and have two cars, so the miles are split between them," she wrote.

Motor1 reached out to Land Rover Austin and to Ashlee via TikTok. We'll be sure to update this if either responds.