Well, don’t bother posting any legal questions, then. We’ll probably give you wrong answers just to fuck with you. Cuz lawyers are all like that.
:rolleyes:
Having met less than honorable plumbers, carpenters, contractors, roofers, lawyers, store managers and so forth, I doubt very much that you can make an argument that auto technicians are any more or less honest than any other profession.
Part of the problem is that many people don’t see the all that we do and the knowledge and expertise that is required to do the job on many different cars. They just see the righty tighty, lefty loosey and think that is all there is to what we do.
If you doubt this read post 1 and 11 in this very thread.
MacTech who is a very smart guy didn’t understand this simple fact. To his credit he manned up and admitted it. He is a much better man in my eyes after doing this.
Have I seen dishonest techs? Sure I have. Over the years I have probably met 4 or 5 that were crooked. Is that number larger than the number of crooked attorneys I have met? Well, yes, but I meet a metric buttload more auto technicians because I am in the business. Expressed as a percentage I doubt the numbers are much different.
Now as a service manager I fire anyone that I find that is not honest as quickly as I can get proof. I tell my guys when I hire them that I run a clean shop and they had better not be lying cheating or stealing. I have a zero tolerance for this. If I catch them, they are history. In all my years, I have only had to fire one guy for fraud.
When you come into a thread and post
It hurts. No you didn’t name me by name, but you implied that most shops and technicians are dishonest. Sorry dude, but that pisses me off. You can call me an asshole, or a dumb fuck and I won’t get upset, hell depending on circumstances I might even agree with you. But call me a liar or a cheat and I get big time pissed. Do it in my dealership and you will be shown the door.
So I would turn your quote around, in a thread where the OP has already admitted that he over reacted is it really necessary to go through this faux outrage exercise and claim that mechanics are dishonest?
He might want to remember that not everyone watched Seinfeld.
I sure am glad my got my Johnson rod replaced. Link not quite safe for work.
I still have to rotate my blinker fluid though… 
I would also suggest you put winter air in your tires. The summer air is no good below about 20F.
Rick - I posted that because, whether you agree with the sentiment or not, no one should be surprised that it is a common opinion. I was reacting to Missy U’s stunned outrage, which seemed out of place to me.
More than most professions, auto mechanics certainly have the opportunity to push the boundaries of honesty, because it is difficult for non-knowledgeable individuals to check things for themselves. And unfortunately, many of them do choose to push the boundaries. What is your opinion of shops that still recommend people change their oil every 3,000 miles? I call that dishonest. They probably excuse it by saying it doesn’t harm anything and it’s just aggressive preventive maintenance, or that longer oil change intervals are “unproven”, or whatever. It’s still dishonest in my book. They are lining their pockets by taking advantage of people who trust their advice and expertise.
Yes, there are dishonest people in every profession. And maybe proportionally the same fraction, to boot. But it is easier for dishonest auto mechanics to get away with it, since most people 1) Depend on their car for their livelihood and cannot deal with getting second opinions, 2) don’t have the technical knowledge to understand the complex mechanical systems in a modern car and judge for themselves whether a repair is needed, 3) don’t have the equipment to see most problems for themselves (a lift, jack, etc.) Additionally, most people interact with auto mechanics on a far more frequent and consistent basis than electricians, contractors, plumbers, lawyers, etc.
In the past two years, I have had the following experiences with dishonest auto mechanics:
- After moving to a new city, I took my 8-year-old BMW to a new shop for scheduled maintenance (oil and filter change, brake fluid and coolant flush). They called me to say that I had a leaking differential seal, a cracked power steering reservoir, a worn serpentine belt, a few other things, and that this would all be $1,800 to fix.
I asked them to fax me a written estimate, and I then got quotes from 1) the local BMW dealer, and 2) my favorite shop back home. The dealer quote was $1,200, and the other quote was lower. I eventually determined that the shop was charging me prices for the parts that were almost twice the retail price from the dealer’s parts department.
I called them and asked them about the high estimate, and they gave me a bunch of bullshit about how their parts were better than dealer’s and told me I shouldn’t own a BMW if I couldn’t afford to maintain it. I got my car back from them and took my car to a very high-end independent BMW shop 50 miles away the next week.
This shop told me a) The previous shop had not performed the brake fluid flush they charged me for, b) the belt was fine, c) the power steering reservoir was fine and simply had some spilled fluid on it that looked like a leak, d) the differential seal leak was so minor that they would not have even mentioned it to me had I not specifically asked.
- I bought a new car and took it to the dealer for the first oil change. They pushed their “oil service plan”, wherein I could get X oil changes for $Y. I asked what kind of oil they used, and they said “Pennzoil synthetic.” “What a great deal!” I thought to myself, and promptly coughed up $Y.
6,000 miles later, I return to the same dealer for my next oil change. I brought with me a Blackstone oil analysis kit. As I was talking to the service writer, I gave him the kit, asked him to ask the tech to collect some of the used oil, and asked for the exact type of Pennzoil oil they used so that I could write it on the form. He got much less talkative and said he’d have to check. Five minutes later he comes back and says they use some brand I never heard of (which, after further research, turned out to be some local rebadged off-brand bulk oil who advertised API certification but were not listed on the API website). When I complained that I had been told they were using Pennzoil, he denied it and told me all motor oil was the same anyway.
- Disgusted, when a warranty issue came up 2,000 miles later, I took the car to another local dealership. I dropped it off and went to work. At work, I got a call from that dealership.
Dealer dude: “Yeah, Mr. Absolute, we took care of that noise from the front suspension, but the tech performed our courtesy 21-point inspection, and he said your motor oil looks real bad and burnt up. We recommend you change it while we have it in the shop.”
Me: “Well, I just had the oil changed 2,000 miles ago with full synthetic. I think I’ll just follow the schedule in the book.”
Dealer dude: “Well, ah, yeah, with synthetic you can push the intervals a bit further, ah, yeah, you can probably hold off, ah, on, ah, that, if you want.”
Of course, I looked at the oil myself when I got the car back and it looked fine. And when I sent the oil off to Blackstone 5,000 miles later, they told me the oil was still fine and I could’ve left it in for another few thousand.
Would you return to any of these places? They are all still in business, and based on the reviews on Yelp, still doing this kind of shit to people every day.
I am not suggesting that all auto mechanics are dishonest. But I bet if you ask most people, they will have similar stories. So, I do not understand the stunned outrage when someone makes a joking remark about dishonest mechanics.
And as I said, these experiences simply make me appreciate the honest mechanics I’ve found - no doubt including yourself - even more.
Sorry, Seinfeld reference. I thought everyone would have gotten that…
Well, you have to realize that a lot of shops view customers as short term -they try to oversell you on everything. As for why they wanted to charge for new rotors-they figure that if they don’t, and your old rotors start making noise or pulsating, you will think they scammed you. Agree, the pricing was very high, but at least they guarantee their work. The whole pricing of aftermarket parts is also an issue-some aftermarket parts are fine-as good as OEM. Others are really cheap, and likely to cause problems. The same for rotors-although the most expensive cross-drilled rotors are only marginally better than Autozone-type replacement rotors. But the main factor in shop pricing is time-for a mechanic to pull your old rotors off, mount them on a brake lathe, turn them and check them, then remount, he could have done three brake jobs (by putting on new rotors)…and not tying up the lift. AUDI dealerships never turn old rotors-the OEM rotors are thin to begin with (to save weight), and will warp if turned. That is why a dealer brake job on an Audi A4 runs >$1000.00
As others have said, do your own work-its cheaper and you know the job was done right!
Sorry - I don’t watch Seinfeld. I’m sorry for jumping on your case. 
So, if someone cracks a racist/sexist/bigoted joke in your company, and another person takes exception to it, you’re going to upbraid them for being sensitive?
It doesn’t matter if an attitude is commonplace or not. It matters if that attitude is offensive, prejudiced, or plain stupid, and when an attitude like that is displayed, it’s in everyone’s best interest to challenge it. Outrage is warranted. Dismissal is not.
So complaining about mechanics is akin to racist jokes?
Actually, some crooks around here are still running the “nitrogen gas in tires” scam. Ordinary atmospheric air id fine (80% N2). But heck, its only $10/tire extra!
Well, that’s fine if you have the space to work on your car, the tools, the know-how, and are physically able to do the work.
While it’s usually possible to borrow a friend’s driveway or garage, and one can usually purchase the tools if need be, the thing that scares me the most about the DIY approach is that all too many people have wildly inflated notions of their own knowledge. Yes, there are some excellent shadetree mechanics. There are also a lot of ignoramuses who are now driving unsafe vehicles because they don’t know what they don’t know about working on their vehicles.
Really, it’s a good idea for those of us who own/drive autos (which is most of us) to educates ourselves to some degree even if we’re not doing our own work. Having a certain base knowledge has allowed me to detect some rather outrageous BS’ing from the dishonest segment of the industry.
Still take my Toyota to the local dealership, despite the cries of DIY and those warning me it’s more expensive. Well, sometimes it is, but the dealership doesn’t wait for us to ask to see the removed/replaced parts, they offer to show them to us and in one case made a point to take us to the car to show us something that really did need to be fixed immediately, and we haven’t had the “joy” of driving out of the garage post-new brakes only to have them fail within a block, or get halfway home and suddenly realize the cap to one or another fluid reservoir was sitting on the passenger seat instead of properly installed in the car. Yes, we all have horror stories, don’t we? Is the dealership always the solution? Of course not, there are shady dealers, too.
Really, bottom line education is your greatest asset. Educate yourself on your own vehicle. Educate yourself about the reputation and track record of your mechanic of choice. If you do your own work it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a second opinion once in awhile.
Yeah well you can stuff your sorry’s in a sack, mister!
</seinfeld> 
I don’t know too many monkeys who could take apart a fuel injector. High five.
Speaking just for myself you can call me a racist, honkey, kraut, redneck, dumb, stupid, asshole, cracker, paddy, gringo, etc. and it does not bother me in the least.
But when someone talks about how auto technicians are dishonest it pisses me off to no end.
YMMV of course.
Well my mechanic is of a race, soooo…
My mechanic said I needed a set of high-speed bumper bolts and a muffler belt installed for $10,000.00, was I ripped off?
yes. everyone knows muffler chains last longer than belts.