[Rant] Incompetent/dishonest repair experience

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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.
 
Probably more people than most people think.......

I just got done Ranting about the tire shop not changing my valve stems in the tire section. I should have put it in the mechanical/maintenance section on this site?

It's amazing what people try to get away with, or how incompetent they can be. Makes a bad name for the good people.
 
Originally Posted By: oilboy123
Probably more people than most people think.......

I just got done Ranting about the tire shop not changing my valve stems in the tire section. I should have put it in the mechanical/maintenance section on this site?

It's amazing what people try to get away with, or how incompetent they can be. Makes a bad name for the good people.


Yes does make a bad name for shops like mine. That guy was a idiot how can you not check the hoses??? Its like they just pull stuff outta there a55 and try to rip you off. You make more money by being honest
 
As a tech I know that any car that comes in with it's overflow bottle empty (or the customer says they had to fill it) has it's cooling system pressure tested, period. Putting that system under 15lbs of pressure sounds like it definitely would have caused that hose to leak.

Franchise auto repair shops tend to hire the bottom of the barrel because they don't pay well. They are often owned by people who just wanted to 'own a franchise'. If you've never worked in an auto repair shop you really have no business owning one in my opinion. I would never recommend bringing your car to a franchise shop for any type of diagnosis. Although there may be a few good techs scattered here and there, it's a rarity.

Although I support them in charging you for the amount of time it took to diagnose it, since they didn't diagnose it correctly they shouldn't have charged you. That doesn't make sense to me.
 
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If he had found my leak, I would have had no problem paying the fee. However, my issue was that he did not find the problem, and more than that, he charged me extra to come up with his bull[censored] because he couldn't find a simple leak.
 
That is a good point....



And on a simple cavalier 2.2-and they can't find a leak, that is really bad.


Heck, my WIFE found a leak a few years back on a friends car, ans she knows little about cars....
 
I was not aware a Cavalier had a "fan controller." As far as I know the computer grounds a relay and the fan turns on. I know because I modified my old one with a manual switch.
 
I've had good luck at my local Midas when the work is too complicated for me to do myself, but I think I may be lucky in just having a location near me that's well staffed. The Midas across town on the other hand, is downright terrible.
 
Anyone who is at all familiar with the Cavalier/sunfire 2.2L OHV, should know that if the A/C isn't on, the needle will go almost to the end of the "normal range line" before the fan kicks on (it's a 190 thermostat, but 210 for the fan relay I believe). Mine is the exact same way.
 
As a former tech, I feel dirty whenever I am forced to let someone else touch my car. I have a muffler shop that I talk into doing all my dirty work, only because the tech isn't smart enough to be crooked but he still does beautiful work on the cheap, and they do what I tell them to do.
 
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A fancy scan tool would have helped steer the guy in this instance. They have a "fan command on" mode that would have worked, as well as actual, not dummy gauge, coolant temp, which would have been below the 220'F or so that calls for fan.

A pressure test, which we know they didn't do, would have found the hose.

It actually kind of sounds like the guy was following a diagnostic tree like you'd find on alldata but making some horribly incorrect assumptions... like "check for leaks".
 
Places like that, off the main road, are like the McDonalds of the auto repair industry, get in, get out, get charged 800 tokens, and if you never come back, that's great.
 
Wouldn't pass inspection on a Bimmer, needed an exhaust bracket, a repair shop told me it would cost 168 tokens.

Granted it was a BMW only specific part, (I think think a muffler shop could manufacture one easily), ordered it for 50 tokens, installed it myself in 5 minutes. Just put the car on ramps, rip out the old broken one and tighten one bolt on the new one.

That is over 100 tokens for 5 minutes of labor. Generally 90% of customers are clueless about such repairs and just utterly have no idea. I do, I have the factory service manual with diagrams and have a pretty good idea.

They are the same ones who charged me 70 tokens to install a wiper blade and change a taillight bulb to pass inspection. I shouldn't have come back to them, but they are the most convinient location close to me. No more.

And when I needed 2 front struts and a tie rod for the Bimmer, quoted me 2 grand for the job. I decided to rebuild the entire front end with all the (premium) parts and got about a 1.5K in parts and did it myself basically.
 
Bad mechanics will tell you everything is wrong and you need to replace everything, and do the job.

Dishonest mechanics tell you something is wrong, charge you for it, but did not do the job.

I've seen both, one mechanic told me all 4 of my engine mounts are bad (but in reality only 2 of the 4), and the other mechanic charge my dad for a camber kit on a car and didn't install it (he didn't found it until 4 years later and a tire shop said the misalignment is too far off and need a camber kit).

Sometimes a mechanic charging you for diagnostic is ok even if he didn't found a problem (if there is no problem), as long as he is honest and did put in effort in it.
 
If you have to chose between an incompetent mechanic and a dishonest mechanic, always choose the incompetent; at least he will work with you if you tell me exactly what to do.
 
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