Wife "UPSOLD" on Car Services!

The BBQ Pit
41

When I leased my vehicle, the dealership gave me cupons for five years of free oil changes.

When I bought out the lease after five years, the dealership gave me cupons for three more years of free oil changes.

The dealership’s mechanics have never tried to sell me something that was not needed, and have done a good job at advising me of when certain work will eventually need to be done.

I guess they figure that good service will result in return business, both for their service shop and for their vehicle sales. I think they are right.

42

I bought an old Caprice a few years back, and noticed a big puddle of oil under it the next day.

Looking under the car, I saw a yellow oil filter with a big red “J” on it. When I grasped that filter, it felt very loose–3/4 turn loose, to be exact.

Iffy Lube can’t even change oil correctly!

43

SmartAleq Look I know it’s not about me. But the impression some people are trying to give is that I am the only honest guy out there fixing cars. This is just not true.
Are there thieves and liars in the auto repair business? Yes, unfortunately this is true. Is it every damn shop out there? Hell no. Is it a majority? Again no. While I don’t know what the actual percentage of bad shops is. I will say this, what ever percentage it is, it is too large.
See the honest guys get real tired of being hit with that very broad brush of all mechanics are cheats, liars, incompetent, uncaring assholes. After a while it starts to get personal.

You are 100% correct in this. However if you take your car to a shop that does one of these things, then leave and don’t ever go back. If you go back you are just feeding and perpetuating the every thing you are so upset by. Hence my question and to Harmonious Discord up thread. Why in the name of all things that are holy would you ever go back to a shop that tried to scam you? To do so just keeps that asshole in business. If enough people stop going there, the asshole goes out of business, and the good guys stay in business. There is an old saying" fuck me once, shame on you. fuck me twice, shame on me." If somebody fucks you know it and you go back, in my mind that puts you somewhere between a box of rocks and a bag of hair on the intelligence scale.

Yes the good guys tend to flock together. So do the assholes. But as I mentioned up thread, sometimes the good guy’s price isn’t all that out of line with the idiots. The example of my oil change being within 50 cents of the iffy lube is true.
I understand what it is like to have too much month left at the end of the money. I have done repairs for free or reduced rates for good customers. I understand, really I do.
But for the love of OG, don’t go back to the shop you know is a ripoff. It is counterproductive for both you and my industry.

44

No they can’t. What is worse is they will try every way possible to get out of taking responsibility for their actions.
“It was like that when you came in.” for anything from a stripped drain plug to a cracked oil pan.
See the second video l linked above for an actual case.

45

Here’s what I used to do to keep from falling for the dirty air filter, etc. scams- bring only enough cash for the oil change when you go, and no credit cards or ID. :slight_smile:

46

They routinely do this to me, and I mean “routinely” as in “virtually every time I go in, regardless where I take it.”

I use synthetic oil only in my Civic and have never used anything else. I get the oil changed every 12,000 miles. I have never had an engine repair on the car yet, and it has 150,000 miles on it. I take it to Speedy/Jiffy/Minute Lube-R-Quik, whichever I happen to be driving by. I get tires from the tire shop and I change the air filter and wipers myself, so I’m not a great prospect for upselling. :slight_smile:

47

This is a very good point! SATURN specifies the orange type, with a special inhibitor againsts the corrosion of aluminum. Now we have a car that has been refilled with GOD KNOWS WHAT kind of coolant-probably whatever the shop got for cheap that day. Suppose my wifes car now overheats, because the radiator is plugged with correded aluminum? These clowns have probably VOIDED the SATURN warranty, and now I go back to them?
These people should be prosecuted.
And (as others have noted) these places hire kids, who think nothing of overtorqing drain plugs and stripping threads-Iffy lube did this to my Dad’s car!

48

Brakes, honey. BRAKES.

49

Fair comment. It’s confirmation bias, mostly, I expect - the majority of ordinary services carried out but competent, reputable mechanics just aren’t as newsworthy or memorable as the few nightmares perpetrated by the small proportion of villains.

50

At my 60K service interval, my dealer called me at work with the estimate, and said they ‘highly recommended’ a power steering flush for my Escape. I was working with another perosn at the time, and somewhat distracted, so I said, “Yeah, go ahead”. I’ve been with this dealer for years, and they’ve been pretty honest, so I didn’t think much about it.

Later that day, I thought, “What the hell? Why did I do that? Oh well, not that big a deal.” Then I got the bill - $161 extra for the flush. Yuck. I paid it. Then a few thousand kilometers later, my power steering pump failed. My guess is that they dislodged some debris or put the wrong fluid into the system after the flush, but I can’t prove that and didn’t make a big issue of it. New power steering pump: $700 installed. While it was in, I told them to do the next service interval since it was close and I hate being without my vehicle. It was supposed to be just an oil change anyway. Except that they did the 60K service interval again - the most expensive one there is. So I got a bill for $1200 total.

I had to come back the next day with the paperwork for the last service and show the manager that it was the same 60K service they just did. They’ve promised to refund the $275 - the difference in cost between the 60K service and the 65K service they should have done. But so far as I know, that ‘highly recommended power steering flush’ wound up costing me $861.

51

Sam sometimes shit does just happen. Maybe the guy did something wrong, maybe he put in the wrong fluid, but the most likely answer is it was your turn in the barrel.

:eek: :rolleyes: :mad:
If this ever happens to you again, look the service manager straight in the eye, and say no, goddamn it, you have a goddamn computer system, you look my last service up. Or better yet, pull my jacket (Both the state and the Car maker require dealerships to keep a file jacket with hard copies of all the repair orders on each car they service) and let’s go read my last invoice together.
There is no reason for me to have to go home and find my copy, when I know damn well you can access it in less than a minute from your desk.
Now would like to look this up, or should I discuss with the dealership’s general manager?

::: deep cleansing breath:::.
There, I’m better now.

52

From about 1996 to 2003, I owned nothing but Ford Mustangs (mostly Cobras) and had an outstanding mechanic who didn’t work on any cars except mustangs and corvettes (ya, go figure lol). In 2004, I bought an Audi. What a mistake that was. I got ripped off on dealer repairs (including a brand new tranny due to a manufacturers defect that arose a mere 5 weeks after my warentee expired… that dented my wallet 5 grand) almost ripped off on a dealer brake job–they INSISTED that because of the AWD, all brakes, pads and rotors had to be replaced all at once, that there was no other way to do brakes in that car (to the tune of $2600). Luckily, I found a mechanic at a little independent shop that managed to do a find job of just redoing the rear brakes and they worked perfectly–for a grand total of $400. Yes, brakes in that car are expensive, i knew that, but not $2600 expensive.

Two weeks ago, after the Audi’s engine blew out (at a mere 60K miles) I went and bought another mustang for the sole reason that I know I have a good mechanic to work on it that won’t jive me on repairs.

My suggestion is to be smart about your cars–talk to people who have cars like yours, find out if they have a good independent mechanic they like, and give that business your business. I actually found the mechanic who did my brakes on my Audi and any subsequent work after that, on a local web site where locals review nearby businesses. Very helpful and they turned out to be a very good repair shop.

53

I had a horrible experience with a Monro brake shop a few years ago. The brakes on my car started squeaking, and after having learned my lesson about waiting too long to replace my brakes (after destroying a pair of rotors on a previous car), I took it in pretty quickly to have the brakes checked. Now, I hadn’t noticed any actual problems with the braking, just a squeaking that I took to be a warning that they’d need to be replaced soon.

I took it to Monro on my lunch hour to have them check it out. After about 20 minutes, they delivered the bad news: my front left brake was completely frozen, the right brake was metal on metal, and I’d need a new set of calipers and rotors. I think the total estimate was $960. Well, I was a broke schlub and certainly didn’t have anything close to a grand laying around so I climbed back in my car, clutching my quote, and drove back to work wondering if my brakes would fail.

I was lamenting this in the smoking area when one of my coworkers offered to do the change for me. If I bought the parts, he’d replace them. So I went back to my desk, ordered the parts that I would need, and that weekend we met up to get it done.

Luckily, we first only bought the brake pads, as he figured he might as well take a look at the situation before I forked over my money for the parts. He had no problem getting the brakes out (which, to my untrained mind, seemed a bit surprising considering one of the brakes was supposed to be “frozen”). He pulled out the pads and started laughing. He slid out from under the car, holding both an old brake pad and a new one. He asked me to tell him which was which.

I couldn’t tell, because I’m a dingbat. That, and they looked pretty much identical. Turns out, my brake pads were in almost perfect condition (I had only owned the car for about 2 months, so I had no idea whether they’d been recently replaced) with plenty of life left in them. No damage to my rotors, no frozen anything, calipers in perfect condition. The diagnosis? Probably a little brake dust that caused the squeaking.

He replaced the brakes anyway just to make the day worth the effort. He ended up saving me over five hundred dollars in additional parts that I wouldn’t have needed, not to mention over $800 in not paying Monro to do it. Of course, he did introduce me to an eternity of headache and hassle as I tried to get Monro to do something about the fact that I had been blatantly lied to, but despite repeated calls, letters to head offices, and persistent follow ups, nothing ever came of it.

The bastards. I don’t know if it was because I am a woman, or because I seemed like an easy mark for wanting my brakes checked when they were in perfect condition. All I know is that they tried very hard to part me from my hard earned money, and had I not bitched about it at work, I might have actually given it to them.

I try to be a savvy customer when it comes to getting work done on my car. When I had the problem with the previous car with the rotors being worn down, I made them show me the rotors so that I could actually see the damage. Not that I had any real doubts in that instance - the grinding noise was a pretty good clue that things were pretty bad. I would have asked Monro to do the same had they actually done the repairs, but now that I think about it, what’s to stop them from just showing me someone else’s damaged parts? If they’ll lie about the condition of my brakes, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t blink at showing me damaged goods that werent actually mine.

54

And really, although a lot of people have already chimed in on this, make it a point of patronising your independant mechanic for everything. If he charges an extra couple of dollars for an oil change or if his mark-up on a battery is a little higher than the big chain down the street just pay it. When you make a point to get the easy stuff done somewhere else to save some money you run the risk of driving the little guy out of business. The chains get away with low prices on consumables because of high volume and the upselling of unneeded services.

55

I go to 3 places to get prices before I authorize any work. You will be amazed how varied the prices will be. They will show you what crooks they are then.

56

Funny this should come up. I took the '98 LeSabre to a quick change place. They begged, begged and begged to “flush the coolant” I said no, no and no, top it up if need be.

One minute after I drove it out of the shop the car was lurching, the “Check Engine” light was on, and white smoke was billowing out the exhaust pipe. It was previously running perfectly. I brought it back. “We don’t know. We did flush the coolant for you though.”

So I took it to an independent place I trust. $1000 and several blown head gasket related issues later, my car’s running fine now. And he had to replace all the oil and coolant anyway, since he tore the engine half apart.

(I also had him look at a squeaking brake. He reported that there was nothing wrong with the pad - the quickie brake place had not bothered to clean the parts up when they’d replaced the pad the previous time.)

That’s the last time I ever use a quick oil change place. I don’t know if they broke my car, but I do know they won’t get a chance to do it again.

57

Rickjay, you can blame the slovenley engineers at GM, as this is a common problem on the series II 3800 V6 engine that your car is equipped with. After 2003 GM switched to an aluminum intake manifold plenum that fixed the problem, and it is also possible to fit newer, reinforced plenums on older engines before the intakes fail.

So it is not out of the question that your intake manifold plenum was on its’ last legs already.

58

We really like our mechanic. We’ve been taking our cars to him for about 6 years now, and he’s never tried to upsell us on anything. I’ve taken my car to the Acura dealer at times, and they’ve suggested a couple of thousand dollars in repairs–my car’s not even worth that much (it’s over 20 years old). My usual mechanic just shrugs and says it’s just a station car (gets me to and from the train station mostly) and it works fine for that. There’s nothing seriously wrong with it. I love my mechanic.