It's unfortunate, but there are scams everywhere. Earlier this summer my wife took the kids to visit her family in eastern PA. While there, her Mountaineer developed a horrible miss and running very rough. It happened late on a Saturday afternoon, the day before they were supposed to leave. I tried talking her into waiting until the next day when a dealership opened up (the only place I'd trust to work on my vehicle in an area I'm not familiar with) but she needed to be at work Monday morning so she set out in search of a place that was open. She found a shop that was affiliated with Goodyear so I figured it may be our best shot. They scanned the vehicle she called me and put me on the phone so I could speak with the manager. Diagnosis came back a bad coil pack on #7 and a misfire on one of the cylinders on the other bank. He quoted me somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 for the coil and to change out all 8 plugs. I really did not like the idea of anyone other than myself or a certified mechanic wrenching on those plugs as the 4.6 is quite prone to seizing the plugs up and it is easy to break them off in the head if you are not careful. Not as bad as the 5.4, but bad enough that there is a written procedure in my OEM Ford service manual for removing them and extracting them in the event of one breaking. I had a 5 minute discussion with the manager on this subject, he assured me no problem his guys do them all the time and they could have the car back to my wife in 2-3 hours. So I agreed to let them do it and they took the car around back while my wife called her aunt for a ride. 3.5 hours later, they call saying the vehicle is done. Wife drives it back to her aunts no problem and it sat overnight until the next day when they got in it to go home. Less than an hour into the trip, the car starts bucking, CEL dings and continues to get worse and worse until she no longer felt safe driving it and pulled off on the next exit. Now it's Sunday morning, NOBODY is open, and my wife and kids are stranded 4 hours from home. So I hitched my trailer up and headed out to get them. Upon arriving I popped the hood half expecting to see a loose coil or connection, and boy was I in for a shock. There was 1 well that looked to be clean, which happened to be the one they had to replace the coil on. That was the only clean well, the others were dirty and grimy and looked like they hadn't been touched. I started wiggling the coils (on the 4.6 each plug has it's own coil it snaps down on and the coil is retained by a small 6mm bolt), and #5 looked loose and suspect. So I popped that coil off and low and behold the ceramic on the plug was badly chipped. And it was an old plug. No clue how they managed to do that but my only guess is extreme carelessness. The only other one they messed with was #3 and they gave up on it and snapped the coil back on, but failed to install the retainer bolt so it was riding around on top of the plug, likely making an intermittent connection. Once Monday came, I called the Goodyear shop up that worked on it and asked the manager how he slept that night knowing he sent a woman and two small children on a 400 mile trip knowing not only that the vehicle was unsafe but lying to us about the work performed. I said some other choice words, he red faced denied everything stating he signed off on the mechanics work and charged all the parts out himself. I told him he'd be hearing from me again and hung up the phone. Now normally I do all my own work but I knew in this instance I would need documentation so I called my dealer up that we bought the vehicle from and explained the situation to them. They pulled all the plugs out, took pictures of each as they were removed, took a picture of the missing bolt on the coil pack, and faxed it over to the corporate office with the claim number that the wife had received when she called there and opened a complaint. The company was very apologetic once they received the pictures from my dealership and reimbursed us all of our money that they charged us originally and paid our bill at the dealership. The one thing that really bothered me still was not knowing if these goons were still wrenching on other peoples cars so about a week after they reimbursed us I called corporate back and discussed the severity of the situation, telling them the manager was well aware of the long drive my wife had ahead of her and how adamant he was about the work being done. They informed me the mechanic told the manager he couldn't do the job after attempting to remove two of the plugs, said he was afraid of breaking them off. So the manager told him to button it back up with the new coil and let him know when it was done. The manager proceeded to call my wife, tell her the car was done, and billed us for all the work. The mechanic didn't say anything until a regional manager came in to investigate with the pictures of the old plugs in his hand and the mechanic rolled over on his boss. They were both terminated on the spot.
