So the other day, as I was coming home from work, my low coolant light came on. I checked the temp gauge and it wasn't overheating, but just to be safe, I shut the car off and took a look under the hood. Reservoir was almost dry, there were a few drops of coolant sprayed on the top of the engine, but no obvious leaks. Since it didn't overheat, I found a gas station, added more coolant, and drove it home.
Since I couldn't easily find the leak myself, and because I live in an apartment and therefore can't easily work on the car myself, I took it to the local Midas down the street (as I would learn later, this was probably a terrible mistake, but I don't know anything about any of the repair shops in the area, and that's where my dad recommended I take it). Long story short, they spend the whole day bumbling around with the car, call me after about 4 hours saying they haven't found it yet and need more money to keep looking (!), and to make a long story short, at the end of the day, they tell me that I need a "fan controller" to the tune of $800, and to make things worse, this supposed fan controller is linked to the ECU by vin number, and they need another $100 or so to "re-program" it to make everything play nice together. Their justification for my missing coolant was that it was "forced out of the overflow cap due to high pressure, but there was no leak."
Naturally, my [censored]-o-meter is going off the charts at this point, for a couple of reasons. The first being that I know for a fact my fan works just fine, as I had the A/C on and I could hear it running. Second, the car didn't overheat, so there's no reason for coolant to have been pushed out the overflow cap. Third, the coolant spray on the engine I saw was on the other side of the engine from where the overflow tank is. The guy says I'm welcome to come down there and he'll "show me" that he's right. They're about to close though, so he says he'll keep the car overnight and I can come by tomorrow morning. Fine.
I get there the next morning, he turns the car on, lets it warm up, and as soon as the temperature gauge hits half, he says the fan is supposed to come on but it hasn't. Now, I've been driving this car for 3 years, so I know what its normal behavior is, and I know the fan doesn't come on until the temp gauge gets a few notches above halfway. I tried to explain this to the guy over the phone the other day, and he insisted that's the way he tested it, but I'm starting to think he didn't because of what he just showed me. I explain this to him, but instead of testing my hypothesis, he starts trying to tell me that the vehicle is already overheating and if he doesn't turn it off, I will damage the engine. I eventually convince him to let me test it my way (he won't have any part of it, and tells me that it's my fault if I damage anything), and sure enough when the temperature gets a few notches past half, the fan comes on just like it should. Also, there's now a fairly large pool of coolant on the ground, from a (guess what) leaking hose that he somehow "missed." To be fair, though, the hole was so small that unless I was actively revving the engine, nothing much was coming out. Probably why I missed it the other night.
Against my instinct as a good consumer, I let them fix the hose. After that's all done, the guy is still trying to charge me $80 for the "diagnosis." I straight up tell him that his diagnosis was wrong and I'm not going to pay extra for his incompetence when I'm the one who actually found the problem and told him to fix, and after a bit of arguing and generally being stubborn, he agrees. The car's working fine, hasn't overheated, and I still have the proper amount of coolant, but the whole experience has left a terrible taste in my mouth. I wonder how many other people with less knowledge, more disposable income, or both, would have spent almost $1,000 on a completely unnecessary repair that wouldn't have fixed the real problem anyways.
Since I couldn't easily find the leak myself, and because I live in an apartment and therefore can't easily work on the car myself, I took it to the local Midas down the street (as I would learn later, this was probably a terrible mistake, but I don't know anything about any of the repair shops in the area, and that's where my dad recommended I take it). Long story short, they spend the whole day bumbling around with the car, call me after about 4 hours saying they haven't found it yet and need more money to keep looking (!), and to make a long story short, at the end of the day, they tell me that I need a "fan controller" to the tune of $800, and to make things worse, this supposed fan controller is linked to the ECU by vin number, and they need another $100 or so to "re-program" it to make everything play nice together. Their justification for my missing coolant was that it was "forced out of the overflow cap due to high pressure, but there was no leak."
Naturally, my [censored]-o-meter is going off the charts at this point, for a couple of reasons. The first being that I know for a fact my fan works just fine, as I had the A/C on and I could hear it running. Second, the car didn't overheat, so there's no reason for coolant to have been pushed out the overflow cap. Third, the coolant spray on the engine I saw was on the other side of the engine from where the overflow tank is. The guy says I'm welcome to come down there and he'll "show me" that he's right. They're about to close though, so he says he'll keep the car overnight and I can come by tomorrow morning. Fine.
I get there the next morning, he turns the car on, lets it warm up, and as soon as the temperature gauge hits half, he says the fan is supposed to come on but it hasn't. Now, I've been driving this car for 3 years, so I know what its normal behavior is, and I know the fan doesn't come on until the temp gauge gets a few notches above halfway. I tried to explain this to the guy over the phone the other day, and he insisted that's the way he tested it, but I'm starting to think he didn't because of what he just showed me. I explain this to him, but instead of testing my hypothesis, he starts trying to tell me that the vehicle is already overheating and if he doesn't turn it off, I will damage the engine. I eventually convince him to let me test it my way (he won't have any part of it, and tells me that it's my fault if I damage anything), and sure enough when the temperature gets a few notches past half, the fan comes on just like it should. Also, there's now a fairly large pool of coolant on the ground, from a (guess what) leaking hose that he somehow "missed." To be fair, though, the hole was so small that unless I was actively revving the engine, nothing much was coming out. Probably why I missed it the other night.
Against my instinct as a good consumer, I let them fix the hose. After that's all done, the guy is still trying to charge me $80 for the "diagnosis." I straight up tell him that his diagnosis was wrong and I'm not going to pay extra for his incompetence when I'm the one who actually found the problem and told him to fix, and after a bit of arguing and generally being stubborn, he agrees. The car's working fine, hasn't overheated, and I still have the proper amount of coolant, but the whole experience has left a terrible taste in my mouth. I wonder how many other people with less knowledge, more disposable income, or both, would have spent almost $1,000 on a completely unnecessary repair that wouldn't have fixed the real problem anyways.