Auto Repair: Was I Almost Ripped Off?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My car started smoking one morning and it was coming from the radiator so I hoped I needed a new hose or something similarly cheap. It was a Saturday morning and I couldn’t travel too far under the circumstances so I was limited in my options and wound up at a national chain known more for tires than for auto repair.

They looked at the car and came back to me and said it needed a new radiator. Bummer… Okay, how much? $850! Really? Really???

I panicked because it’s only a $4000 car (1997 Nissan Altima GXE) so I had to think about replacing it. I paid them the $39.65 for the coolant system inspection and called a friend who worked for a prominent car rental company.

He was dubious and he called a local mechanic he dealt with at his job and the guy literally laughed at him. He quoted me $250 on the phone and asked me to bring it in.

I got the national chain to give me the estimate in writing - they were going to charge me $355 for the radiator, $110 for a thermostat, $138.80 for hoses and $120 for a coolant flush which is how they got their $850 estimate.

The local guy replaced the radiator, said the hoses and thermostat were fine and looked at me funny when I asked about the flush. “It’s a new radiator,” he said. “There’s nothing to flush so I guess they wanted to charge you to fill it.” Yeah, $120 to fill the radiator.

Anyway, I saved his reciept (final cost without tax: $260) and sent it and the estimate to the customer service department of the national chain.
The rep called me back and got my voice mail. The message she left was that she found nothing wrong: That they always change a thermostat when changing a radiator, they always put on new hoses, they always flush a new radiator (still bewildered about that one) and that while the radiator I got from the local shop was indeed about $100 less than their estimate for that, I don’t have the national guarantee of her fine company dealing with some local guy.

I find this whole situation ludicrous… Is it really standard operating proceedure to change thermostats and hoses when replacing radiators? Did I find a guy who cut some corners - corners I will regret in a few months as summer heats up? Or did the national company indeed work up an estimate that was filled with unnecessary charges and parts?

As of now, a week later, the car is running fine in 90 degree heat with the AC on plus I am not out another $550 or so.

I emailed the national company back saying that I would never use their company again for as much as an oil change. Is my outrage justified?

2

I don’t know why you’re asking “Was I almost ripped off?” You KNOW that you were almost ripped off. And your anger is justified. I’ll never go to Midas again, for ANYthing, unless they’re the last option, due to just such a situation as yours.

Joe

3

The flush is for the engine, not the radiator. The same scale and gunk that builds up in a radiator can also accumulate in the engine’s coolant passages. After 14 years, there’s probably a fair amount of it in there.

Changing the hoses and thermostats are good “while they’re off” preventative items. One end of each hose is already disconnected. Might as well undo the other end and change the hose - they’re not expensive and they do have a way of bursting at inconvenient times. If the hoses are the car’s original ones, they’re overdue for a change. Same for the thermostat. They’re not expensive and they do eventually fail.

The chain’s parts prices are ridiculous - retail “do it yourself” prices for you car are
$10-20 for the thermostat and about $12 each for the upper and lower rad hoses. The radiator itself is $130.

So, a DIY-er could change the rad, both hoses and the stat for $170, plus coolant and gasket sealant.

Will you regret not changing the hoses and stat? Impossible to predict. Personally, I would have changed them if this was my car, unless I knew they’d been changed recently.

4

Off-topic, but wanted to add that driving a 50-yr old car, just about anything is within the range of the DIY-er, which really frees you to fix/replace everything once you’ve got something taken apart.

5

Well, the way I look at it is, “If you took it to any shop, you got ripped off”.

6

Like right after it’s left the repair shop. :smiley:

Car shops hate callbacks. Customer gets a new radiator, and two weeks later an ancient OEM hose breaks (maybe in part because it had to be wiggled/stretched when replacing the radiator), and an angry customer calls back: “Look, all I know is you guys worked on my car two weeks ago, and now it’s not running; I can’t even drive it back to your goddam shop!” They’d much rather replace the hoses while they’re in there. The extra work/revenue from the job is one good thing, but the other part is assurance that if something breaks down in the near future, it won’t be anything remotely related (in the customer’s mind) to the work they did.

Replacing the hoses as preventive maintenance (i.e. before they actually fail in service) is probably not a bad idea if it saves you an expensive/inconvenient tow from wherever your car would have happened to break down. That failure is hard to predict of course, but since your hoses are 13 years old and have ??? miles on them (I’m guessing well over 100K?), it might be worth considering - but not for $140.

7

Hell, if it had been me I would have told them to go ahead and replace the water pump and fan clutch while they were at it.

I used to to car repairs myself. I used to even enjoy it a bit. Since having kids though I don’t even bother. There is nothing worse than having the car all torn up and being up to your elbows in grease and have one of your little darlings come running out to tell you that they absolutely positively need to be somewhere as of yesterday.

8

Except that they are expensive according to the estimate I received and what else could I go on at that point?

By the time I reached the point where I could see that they wouldn’t be that expensive, I found out I didn’t need them at all which is actually even less expensive. :slight_smile:

I am not a DIY-er, as you put it. I am not mechanically inclined. I have no tools to speak of. I don’t have a place to perform auto repair at my house, at least not safely (my driveawy in the back is on a severe incline; I cannot work on a car on the street in front). Plus I have little time in a hectic life to take up auto mechanics as a hobby.

I used to change the oil in my 1971 Maverick and do tune ups when I was in High School and kept the Chilton manual handy but cars were simpler, my life was simpler.

If it’s so easy and cheap, come to Philly and be my mechanic… :slight_smile: Otherwise, simply saying “It’s cheap, do it yourself” is not an option for me - and I suspect not an option for a lot of people. That’s why we have auto mechanics.

9

From those prices, I think the shop was pricing the work as if each element was a standalone job. I have encountered this before; there is no “while you’re in there” discount.

For example, I recently needed my strut mounts replaced. To do this you have to dismantle the whole suspension, so I figured I should ask them to change the strut inserts too. But their quote was the standard “change the strut inserts” price despite the fact that 90% of the work was already done.

10

I wasn’t necessarily suggesting that you do it yourself - just illustrating how high the national shop’s markup is on parts.

11

That’s not true at all.
Did you build your own house? Oh you got ripped off if you didn’t do it yourself.
…and about a million other examples.

Just because you pay for a service doesn’t mean you’re getting ripped off.
It’s trading currency for the value of the service to your person.

I can fix my own cars (on most things), but now that I’m not in my 20s I choose not to. Why should I? My personal time is better spent elsewhere. I’d rather pay to have that service done, and it’s worth it to me.