I’ve certainly had bad experiences in repair shops. Rude, know it all service writers, inept mechanics, hard upsell.
For example, 3,000 miles after I put four new Bilsteins on a car, I was told I needed new struts and shocks by the service writer...to the tune of $1,200, during a state inspection.
“Why” I asked? “Well, your car has over 100,000 miles on it, they’re due to be replaced.” “Did you look at the car?” “Yes”. “Did you happen to see the gleaming yellow paint of the four new struts and shocks that were replaced a month ago? Along with balljoints, bushings, and inner and outer tie rod ends?” Silence...
“Is it up on the lift? We can go take a look, together, if you like...”
We’ve had some recent threads on how customers suck. An egregious set of stereotypes and customer bashing were posted, most of which I disagreed with.
But I think many of us have had some bad experiences with some shops, and some mechanics and service writers can suck, too.
True gems like Trav, or Clinebarger, can be hard to find.
Cue the stereotypes from the other side of the shop counter....from the customer perspective...let’s call it “equal time”.
You made me laugh, thanks. You also reminded me of a (now funny) incident that happened to my wife and I a couple years ago, it was downright dishonesty like yours, but a much smaller scale....My wife had just dropped our daughter off at school, she was still on the school campus. She told me it was a nice day and she had the windows down; drove by a maintenance garage at the school and there was a maintenance? fellow outside the garage talking to one of the policemen on campus....He hollered at her as she drove by, she had a tire leaking bad enough that he could hear it. She stopped, he told her to "pull the car over here." She did, he got an air hose and filled the tire for her; but the tire was damaged (I never saw it, so that's all I can say) and the maintenance man told her she was going to need a new tire
right now. The campus policeman politely joined the conversation and gave her directions to a local (chain) tire shop that was within a few blocks.
This (local chain) tire shop has us in their (computer) records since I've bought tires there for the last several years; sure enough, they look up the tire serial # and the guy tells my wife he will pro-rate warranty replace the tire with a similar one they have in stock; OK. My wife gives the kid the key and they pull the car into the shop, things go south (scamming) quickly.
The guy comes out and tells my wife that the car needs a new serpentine belt. My wife's response is to pull out her cell phone and call me. It gets humorous; because my wife is a good woman, but if you lift the hood on a car, she's lost. I'm willing to bet she doesn't know the transmission dipstick from the oil dipstick....Anyhow, this same car, my wife knew, I had just replaced the serpentine belt the previous weekend. They wanted to "upsell" my wife the
one part that she knew was a new part. The only thing he accomplished was an
instantaneous loss of credibility; with a non-mechanic woman, no less. Don't these scammers realize what they're really doing?
The "service writer," gets me on the phone and starts telling me how "dry rotted and cracked" the serpentine belt is, and I can hear my wife laughing out loud in the background. The kid tells me that a new belt is "only $174.99" and installation is free. I'm thinking to myself, yeah, that's 10 times the price and "installation" takes a 15mm socket and 5 minutes. I really, honestly thought about asking the kid to let me talk to my wife and telling my wife to have them
take the car off the lift, right now, watch them do it, and tow it to our home (maybe 15 miles). I was truly afraid they would sabotage something else on the car. What I actually did was meekly tell the kid "No thank you." They replaced the tire and we will not return to that shop. I wonder how often such things happen?
Edit: I'd love to find someone like Trav or clinebarger (true gems) in my area.