Of course they’re ripping you off, that’s what they do! They can make up anything; nobody knows! “Why, well you need a new Johnson rod in here.” Oh, a Johnson rod. Yeah …
can you come up with a trope which isn’t 40+ years old?
Are you posting from the future? It was only 21 years ago.
That’s from a Seinfeld episode. So it’s probably only 20-25 years old.
It would be fun sometime to break out the exact warranty and let dopers take a look at the terms, see what they think. I bet $1 I am not the guy on here that knows the most about warranties.
Coincidentally, tomorrow I take my new car to the dealership where I bought it for its first maintenance checkup and software upgrade. ~11000 miles, only a rice-grain sized chip of paint missing from the edge of the driver’s door, and it always says my tire pressure is too low, even after I have fully inflated the tires. People say that is because it is winter and the air in the tires contracts, but I wonder…
It will be interesting if I am billed for this.
Seinfeld is timeless 
There is a difference between a joke and a trope.
Though jokes probably do age faster than tropes. So a 20 year old joke probably is 40 in trope years.
I wrote about a similar repair procedure on my car back in 2010. The supposed culprit was the “thermal expansion valve”, which was clearly the most important part of the car, inasmuch as they appear to put one on the ground and build the rest of the car around it. The valve was a $35 part that required seven hours of labor to replace, including removing the dash and both front seats.
And my AC still leaked afterward.
Air conditioning? Probably should have just sold the car to someone in Seattle and bought a new one.
it’s much older than that. “Johnson rod,” “muffler bearings,” “headlight fluid,” “framistan,” etc. have been around for a long time.
I’ll be 60 in a couple of months, but I’m still blonde, and I’m still a single female. Every time my car goes in to the shop, it’s a battle. My dad taught me a few things about cars when I was a teen, but cars have changed so much that most of what I know is useless. I know just enough to toss a trade word in here or there to hopefully defray a little of the predation heading my way. A year ago, I had my car in for the third time for a recurring issue. After looking it over for 3 hours (or at least having it in their facility for 3 hours), I got a long spiel about what they had finally found to be the issue. I asked them to write down the name of the big expensive part for me. I then grabbed my smart phone and punched the info in. I was rewarded by the information that this particular pricey part was NOT included in my vehicle’s guts. After sharing this with the mechanic, I asked for my keys to leave. They made some noise about my paying a diagnostic fee, but I gave them the ‘look’ and tapped my phone again.
I wished I’d had the presence of mind to do that the first time I took it in. I am very suspicious that they were playing me the first two times I took it in as well.
Since then, the smart phone has become my best friend at the auto shop.
…headlights. I’ve literally replaced them in 90 seconds in the past, & that includes:
- Open driver’s door.
- Pull hood release handle.
Now it pull a bumper or turn the wheel just so so you can access the plastic “screws” holding the wheel well in place. Don’t forget to procure a third grader because the hands /arm of anyone older is simply too large to fit in that tight space. :dubious:
Quite different from my 1965 VW beetle. A lot of repairs required removal and replacement of the engine, which sounds time-consuming and expensive, but it only took 45 minutes (nominal) for each task. A 1.5 hour labor charge on the bill isn’t that hard to swallow.
Yes, I’d neglected to mention headlights. It sure seems like there would be a ready market for a truly bare bones vehicle, but it would not be in any kind of federal compliance with a gazillion mandatory this and mandatory that.
For all that even a standard golf cart would suffice for many people as a secondary vehicle, if not their primary daily driver. I’m not leaving earth orbit, just picking up a loaf of milk and gallon of bread.
I remember when the biggest headache in headlight replacement was when the manufacturer placed the screw that released the headlight housing right next to the screw that adjusted the angle of the light.
And to make things even more fun – most dashboards and interior trim pieces are now held in place with hidden ‘clips’ rather than screws, drastically increasing the amount of time required for disassembly.
This is true. And knowing just how the car is assembled often makes disassembly easier and faster.
Case in point not long after the Volvo 850 was introduced there were some AC evaporator failures. Job paid 4 hours total and I had a couple of tech grumbling that it took over two hours just to get the dash out.
I knew this was wrong, so I asked how they were doing the removal.
Well we take off the dash top, remove the instrument cluster, remove the vents (and proceeded to tell me how they were disassembling the dashboard piece by piece in place.)
I looked at them and told them I could have the dash on the floor in 20 minutes by myself.
They called bullshit so out to the shop we went. I pulled out the repair manual and turned to the section on dash removal complete.
It took 17 minutes and that was with hand tools and reading the instructions out loud.
A modern car is the most technologically advanced piece of hardware >90% of the public will either ever own or operate. Yet we are Rodney Dangerfield to the public. No respect.
Look at some of the responses in this thread. Take Airman Doors for an example. He is grousing about paying $75 before being told what is wrong with his car. The perception continues to be that a technician should be able to diagnose the car with a glance from across the parking lot. Now I am very good at fixing cars but even with my level of expertise there are very few things I can diagnose from across the parking lot.* Now AD I’m not trying to pick on you, but do also object that your Doctor charges you for an exam, and doesn’t diagnose you while you are checking in with the receptionist for free?
That shop owner needs to be paid for his training, experience, tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in tools, not to mention rent, heat, lights etc.
when you look at the entire picture $75 is cheap IMHO.
*flat tires. I can diagnose a flat tire from across the parking lot.
yep. there are shady shops out there, but in my experience, when someone says “I was ripped off!” they really mean “I have no idea how a car works but something was wrong and the shop said it was really expensive to fix.”
Whatever Airman Doors does for a living, I’m pretty sure he’s not all that eager to work for free. but when you complain about a “diagnostic fee,” that’s what you’re doing. you’re expecting the mechanic to work for free. 'cos the time spent on trying to find the problem you’re complaining about is time not spend on billable labor actually fixing someone else’s car.
Its free to go without A/C.
To update, I paid nothing for my diagnostic checkup at the dealership. They corrected the air pressure sensor (a tire was actually overinflated, which means the air pressure gauge on the gas station air pump is bad, but it would probably cost $300 for someone to come out and fix that :rolleyes:) I have to call back another time about the chip in the paint, their paint guy just wasn’t in. Chips in the paint may not be covered by warranty…
But that’s two lifetime visits so far, both free. The first time, the car did not have the clear protective bra off the lot, I had to schedule a visit to put it on. It is a little bit amazing how exactly perfectly it was applied!
Take mine for example. How was my experience NOT a ripoff attempt? I paid whatever the diagnostic fee was (about $50 at that time) for them to tell me pure lies. I got nothing for my money!
Rick, you sound like you run an honest shop. If you were in my area, I’d take my work there. But you’re not. You must realize there are dishonest shops, and we on the outside can’t tell the difference until after the visit, if at all.