This happened to a friend, so I have only second-hand information:
He (not a very mechanically savvy type) took his Mini Cooper in for routine service. The nearest dealer is an hour away, but he believes in having “the experts” do all work. They changed the oil, rotated the tires, etc. and sent him on his way.
Back home, the next morning he noticed oil dripping onto his garage floor. After phone calls he took the car back to the dealer. The problem was found to be a stripped oil drain plug; the fix was a new oil pan, costing $800 for parts and labor.
He complained to the Service Manager, and was told that his car is now old (4 years, 80k miles) and that parts naturally wear out. He asked my opinion (since he knows I do all my own work, and presumably know about oil pans and such). I told him I didn’t know about the Mini, but oil pans should basically last the life of the car, and the guy who stripped the oil plug should be responsible for the fix - indeed, he should have been aware of the problem and not allowed the car out of the shop in a state likely to leak oil.
My friend is now deciding whether to take further action against the dealer. I’d like opinions from SDMB car types as to whether this is called for.
The oil pan drain plug threads normally last indefinitely if they aren’t overstressed by improper tightening. I have never heard of an actual (factory) defect in them; to my knowledge they don’t “wear out,” they only become faulty through overtightening. I say this as an auto repair professional with nearly 40 years in the field.
If he has had all his service done at this one dealer, I think he has an excellent case that they are responsible for the problem and should fix it at no charge. If other shops (or individuals) have changed the oil, the situation gets muddier. The root-cause damage may have been done several oil changes ago, and fixing the blame/responsibility on one entity can be problematic. Nevertheless, judges usually don’t have the technical background to know this, and often assign the responsiblity, rightly or wrongly, to the last shop that touched it. Thus there’s still a good chance he would prevail in court.
Generally, I would expect that the mechanic who last installed the drain plug observed something indicating the problem, typically a plug that doesn’t tighten up in a normal fashion. If so, he would have been in a position to advise his manager and the customer about the problem, and possibly reduce the likelihood of the shop’s being held responsible. Of course there’s no way to prove what he did or didn’t observe.
The situation is one where absent proof of negligence, the vehicle owner is repsonsible for fixing it. Things do wear out and/or break in normal use. In this particular case, though, the owner may be able to make a convincing case of negligence. He’ll have to take his chances in court to find out. It’s possible the dealer will relent when faced with a lawsuit.
Mechanically speaking, it may be possible to repair the damage without replacing the oil pan. If a Heli-Coil insert of the right size is available, a perfectly satisfactory repair can be done at much less expense than a new oil pan.
As I understand the OP, the problem arose immediately after he had had the oil drained and replaced at the dealer.
Given this, it should be cut and dried. At our shop, the problem would be fixed free, and if you were SOL without your car for the time it took to fix it, you’d get a free rental car into the bargain.
One thing that might convince the shop owner that it was their shop that did the damage would for them to look at where the guy parks his car at home.
Fresh oil stains made with new clean oil look way different than old oil stains made with dirty oil. If this guy’s car JUST started leaking to any signifcant degree after visiting the shop the stains should tell the tale.
Some shops don’t wanna pay period. Some understandably just don’t wanna pay for things that arent their fault. If this shop is the later this might help.
Also, the car owner needs to get out there and get lots of pics of the parking spot and all the stains ASAP. Maybe even have a neighbor/car guy look at them too so they can back the owner up. In case it goes to court.
I’m not particularly a car guy, but I regularly listen to Car Talk on NPR, and based on this, the friend might contact the manufacturer for assistance.
The best I ever did in this situation is split the bill 50/50 parts and labor and I had to call a “district manager” to get that. I got the same song and dance; “Parts wear out.” This was on my wife’s car, older and higher mileage than the Mini in question but the scenario was identical, if you substitute regional chain for dealership. I stared doing it myself again. In the forty or so years I’ve been changing oil I’ve never had a plug ‘wear out’. Fucking goons on the end of those wrenches. It really doesn’t need to be cranked to the limit.
Now, work that I can’t or won’t do goes to an independent shop down the street. I really don’t trust the dealers here, although I must admit I’ve never used them. Not gonna, either.
Sometimes the manufacturer can put pressure on the dealer in the interest of customer satisfaction.
As Al Bundy points out, there are several repairs that can be put in place that are less than the price the dealer is quoting.
And, as another Car Talk listener I have often heard the brothers Magliozzi mention that most shops (and I would really expect this to be true for a dealership) carry insurance for when they screw up. It doesn’t mean that they want to file on it or will be happy to do so, but I think your friend should definitely pursue getting them to make it right–especially if he has records to show they do all the work.
The oil leak was definitely new: Mini had never leaked a drop - and garage floor was oil-free - before this incident. And this same dealer has done all maintenance to date.
Helicoil would have been my suggestion, but the $800 oil-pan replacement was done without consultation. It’s now paid for (had to be, for him to get the car back) and the question is whether my friend will seek redress.
Wait…so he had an oil leak, brought the car to the dealer and they brought it back to him an hour later and said “All fixed…that’ll be $800.”
Something’s not right. Would a Mini dealer (BMW?) even stock something like that? I’d be talking to the service writer and the GM before my wallet was out of my pocket. Unless he authorized them to do $XXX.XX worth of work without talking to him first, I can’t imagine they would just go ahead and replace an $800 part without getting his permission. Especially considering the alternatives. Helicoil, retapping the hole and using a bigger plug. Hell, for $800 some people might rather just trade in a 4 year old car and think about getting a new one.
I have to assume that you (or we) are missing an important detail. Most likely he pre-authorized them to do a certain amount of work (I’m guessing $1000) without calling him and when he picked it up it was done.
Either way, I’d still be on the phone with the service write and/or GM and explain to them that the only people who have ever touched that car and oil plug have been their employees, if it was stripped it was because they over tightened it.
Gary, I know you have books that say how long work should take, do you have books that say how long parts should last?
The best rule of thumb as to how long parts should last is the following:
“The only thing the word “new” guarantees is that the part has not yet been used.”
Brand new alternators, batteries, and so forth and so on are prone, far too many times, to failing after 5 minutes of use. And guess who the customer blames?
Call me crazy but if something repaired fails after only five minutes I don’t think the customer is being unrealistic about being a bit miffed about. Neither do I suspect this problem has anything to do with the customer other than his understandable disatisfaction.
What Gary T said.
At every dealership I have worked at and at the shop I am at now, the pan would have been fixed. Period. No charge.
My techs at my current shop will notify me if they get a leaky drain plug before they drain the oil, so I can advise the customer.
The customer blames the shop and that’s how it should be. It’s the shop’s responsibility to make it right. From there the shop can blame the company they bought it from and they can blame the company they bought it from until it eventually gets back to someone who decides it’s cheap enough to eat the cost or it gets back to the manufacturer who will either scrap it or figure out why it failed. If the component that failed was outsourced they’ll take it up with the company they bought the component from. But the customer, having bought something that failed within 5 minutes is going to deal with the person they just gave their money to.
Are you suggesting that if I got a new alternator that failed within the first five minutes that I should attempt to figure out who the manufacturer is and try to get them to replace it?
Having said that, I’m not sure what this has to do with anything since no new parts were used. It was a 4 year old car, a 4 year old oil pan and a 4 year old oil plug. It had worked flawlessly up until the last oil change when, if I were to guess, the mechanic put the plug back in with an impact wrench or air ratchet set too high.
I’ve been through this with my Honda Accord. There is a 1/4" soft aluminum washer that goes with the plug for proper spacing; after x number of oil changes and plug-tightening at various shops it got smashed flat, leading to the thread-stripping. The washer is supposed to be replaced each time so now I keep extras in the car and give them a new one (if I don’t forget) each time to prevent it happening again.
“goons on the end of those wrenches” (Marconi N. Cheese)
I was wondering about that. The oil pan and the plug are passive parts. They just sit there. So, aside from the aluminum washer mentioned above, how can the service manager claim that parts just wear out?