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For the most part the places I have worked in the past have been good to the customer and employees but there seem to be a new breed of shops looking to really take customers heads off lately. One fine example is a local shop known for their $1,800 brake jobs, they first showed up on my radar when I was building my current house and had no place to work on my truck, I took it over to them for an oil change with oil and a filter I provided and they not only drove my vehicle over 4 miles(???) but they ended up not using the oil I had provided to them, instead they used their bulk oil and kept my six quarts of synthetic. Fast forward a few years and my business partner brings me his mothers car that she had taken there for a brake estimate, they told her that “everything” was shot and it would be $1,800 just to make it drive able, keep in mind, she drove it for a week before it showed up on my lift. As it turns out the car needed front pads and rotors and rear pads only, I used brake cleaner to clean off the brake fluid they had dumped on the front calipers and a year later they are fine. My biggest concern is shops like the one mentioned here are making a black mark on the profession and are offering low monthly financing on repairs to help them get away with it, the counter guy told her to not think of it in terms of $1,800 but in terms of a $35 monthly “investment” in her safety.
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I am of the opinion shops like that don’t stay in business long they weed themselves out just by word of mouth. Give people fair prices and quality service and they will be back many times over. That one $1800 Job well that will be it.
A local foreign car shop here that was in business for about 40 years closed a few years ago due to the owner’s retirement. This was a “well respected and reputable” shop with a huge ASE sign out front, 3 fully certified ASE techs working there, and the wall behind the service desk was absolutely plastered with dozens of ASE certs, various service schools, and so on.
This place was an utter den of fraud and incompetence. I could write a book on the garbage they perpetuated. They shared a large yard with a towing company and stealing parts off of tow-ins for reseal was a common practice.
They always blamed the thefts on a “homeless guy living in one of the wrecked cars”. Locked yard, 8 foot chain link with barbed wire, and quite often the stolen part was replaced with the defective part from a car they were repairing.
Guess this practice could be considered “returning a core”……..The shop owner even bought a 3 year old Chevy van from the Chevy dealer and returned it for a refund 3 days later under the dealer not happy, bring it back policy.
A chronic oil leak on that van by the next purchaser led to the discovery that someone (guess who) had swapped the engine out with a worn out one that had been given a steam bath and a few cans of engine paint.Returning a core. Priceless.
Several years ago I worked for someone with a broken moral compass. A manual car came in stuck in 3rd gear, customer was quoted for a trans as without seeing the car that’s how it presented. So a guy pulls it in and another guy starts to pull it apart after confirming that the clutch functioned. So co-worker starts to take it apart but something looks odd. Oh look, the shifter cables aren’t attached. Cables were attached, everything was working aces.
Now the owner has 2 choices: 1- call the customer and let them know there wasn’t a big problem but they’ll still have to pay for 1 or 2 hours and they walk away with a smile and their money and spread the word how X shop solved the problem for not much cash. Or option 2. Pull the trans anyway, pressure wash it so it looks shiny and give the customer a big bill. 3 guesses which happened and the first 2 don’t count.
Same guy accused me of stealing $60 2 days after I handled a $1600 cash transaction. My reply was along the lines of “Are you kidding me? If I was going to steal why wouldn’t I have stolen then”. I smashed my hand one day when the big parts washer lid slammed on it, it swelled up like a cartoon. After (surprisingly) only spending an hour at the hospital I came back and informed him I intended to go home, they had to pick up a car in my neighbourhood so I suggested a co-worker drive there in my car then I would just carry on home. Got clocked out just after we left, even though I theoretically saved an hour for someone else to drive there and back.
The kicker is a couple of years ago I was randomly listening to a different radio station on my way into work, turns out he got busted for evading taxes on almost a half million dollars! Made my week.
Long story short, the crooked bastards need to be called out for what they are and run out of business. They drag us all down with them.
If you know a shop is crooked call your local news and ask them to do a sting on the place and if your a mechanic tell them what to look for. It is what they did to Jiffy Lube and it would make great news. Only down side is it makes people trust us even less but, in my experience very few trust us now so wth do we have to loose.
I almost forgot about the parts stealers, had a buddy that worked in a Buick dealership years ago in sales, gets a customer on a used regal and they drive it, then the guy says the color might be a hard sell for his wife so my buddy says “go show it to her” car comes back an hour later and the guy says she won’t go for it but call him if another color shows up, he leaves and when my buddy goes to move the car the alternator light is on….opens hood to see evidence of a swap, guys phone number was bogus. Another returned core…
For the last month or so I have been working at a tire shop. These gems are just a couple favorites.
One guy did the brakes on a minivan. Put the new tires on, and lug nuts on finger tight. Started tightening one side with an impact gun, got called away. Next thing I know some tech is dropping the van to the floor and pulling it out. I didn’t think to say anything because I had left for lunch and I didn’t know what they had, or more importantly hadn’t done while I was gone.
Later that day I was driving home and traffic was kind of bad on the road close to our shop. As I’m driving down the road I see a minivan with a tire missing. The woman inside gripping the steering wheel staring off into space and some dude outside kicking the van yelling at someone on his phone.
The next day I heard they were suing our as*es off.
Same shop, a week later, managed to deuce somebodies car off a lift. They tried to hide it. But the major crack in the window gave it away.
My boss was showing me some tricks on how to get tricky tires off. In the process he gouges the rim off a Chrysler 300 SRT 8. He tells me to throw it on the RR, because the guy will never see it.
I left that shop yesterday and took a position at Firestone.
The shop I just left had three tire techs, and two mechanics quit in one week.
I told them I was done and they started freaked. I over heard one of the bosses saying they spend about $6k a month fixing customers cars, repairing TPMS they break. All sorts of stuff.
This happened some years ago but a local dealer whom I did some work for in my shop sold a very nice older Ford Courier pickup to an elderly gentleman who lived 85 miles west in another city.
The truck quit the old man a few weeks later and it was towed to a local shop. Few hundred bucks later off she went.
A week later the truck died again. Towed, few hundred bucks, and gone again.A week or so later it died again and this time they replaced all of the rocker arms and valve springs. Ha. Like that would cause the engine to suddenly die….
The old man was 1100 bucks lighter this time and called the dealer about the truck. The dealer wanted to know if I’d mind looking it over if he towed it that 85 miles and sure, no problem. Bring the old parts because I guarantee there’s nothing wrong with them.The truck was towed in, the old man went into the dealer’s office to chat it out, and I figured there was something related to the fuel pump fuse or whatever. Sure enough, the end cap on the old style glass fuse was very loose due to the solder melting in the cap and which was then cutting the fuel pump off.
Stuck a fuse in (total diagnostic and repair time less than 3 minutes) and walked over to the dealership to give the old man the news. Both old man and dealer were in stunned shock over something so cheap and easy to diagnose. They offered to pay me but naw; it’s a freebie.
I did ask the old man to drop by that shop in his hometown and let them know what the problem really was. I don’t think they were crooks in every sense of the word; just incompents with no reasoning capabilities.People still break TPMS sensors? It’s not like their a new idea.
It sounds like the “techs” at the dealership didn’t do enough technicianing to begin with.
We sold a Jeep Wrangler Sahara Edition recently, already shady to start with. The buyer ironically wants a snow plow put on it. We sublet it to some plow place 50 miles away for some reason, and it comes back with a PLASTIC plow on it, no power brake assist, and a P0171. There was a hole drilled from inside the car thru the firewall and thru the back of the brake booster, presumably an attempt at running wires.
The real punchline is that thus far, my employer has chosen to eat the cost of replacing the booster!
Bought a Jeep Cherokee very, very cheaply. A large name Trans shop had quoted previous owner about 1200 for a clutch. Owner declined the repair. I bought the jeep, Drove it home bled the clutch slave, and away I went. Doubled my money in a few short months when selling the jeep.. That shop trans shop owner was building himself an 180000 square foot house, ironically.
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