An honest mechanic?

General Discussion
,
21

The same is true of many professionals we all deal with. Doctors, lawyers, banks, stock brokers, computer pros, etc. We don’t know exactly how they do their job, nor do we have a good way to monitor if they are doing it correctly or not. Common sense dictates we rely on personal recommendations when we select each those professionals, b/c we trust the person making the recommendation to us, that the pro has done a good job for them. We don’t buy medical textbooks to study before we go to the doctor. We just go to the doctor. Maybe we’ll read an article in Reader’s Digest about the topic first, that’s about all we have time to do. If the pro we select doesn’t do a good job, or overcharges us, or lies to us, we’ll fire them and hire somebody else. No reason to treat vehicle repair pros any differently.

So if you’re not satisfied with your auto repair pro, ask your friends , co-workers etc who they use, interview a few shops from the list, and choose a new shop. Try not to use the new shop for some emergency job the first time. Use it for something routine, like an oil and filter change, change the windshield wipers, something like that. Give yourself an opportunity to build up some confidence towards the new shop. Meanwhile the new shop owner will be building up confidence towards you, and getting to know you, your vehicles, and your priorities.

22

Sometimes I think what is regarded as dishonesty in a mechanic may be an unwillingness to admit a vehicle problem has him stumped. This is true of people in many professions. Last summer, I was having a problem of double vision when I drove. It appeared to me that oncoming traffic was coming right at me. The center lane would appear to cross right in front of the vehicle. However, I found if I shut my right eye, I didn’t have a problem driving. I didn’t have a problem, though, either reading print or music without the eye being patched. The first optometrist I was able to get an appointment admitted he was stumped. My physician sent me to the hospital for an MRI of the brain which showed no abnormal condition. I was then referred to an ophthalmologist who decided it was an eye muscle that needed surgery, so I was referred to an ophthalmologist who specializes in eye muscle surgery. The problem began at a band rehearsal when I pulled up on a music stand that was stuck. The music rack came off and hit me right under the right eye, but I had no bruising. Neither the optometrist, my physician, nor the local ophthalmologist thought that the incident with the music stand caused the problem. By the time I got in to see the next specialist, the problem had cleared itself up, but I kept the appointment. I told this specialist the whole story as I had told the others. She did a very quick exam and said that when I got whacked with the music rack, the eye muscle swelled just enough to cause my right eye to droop and when I was driving my left eye looked through the top part of my trifocal and the right eye was seeing through the bottom portion. She took time to listen, and sent me on my way in 15 minutes. I think sometimes some mechanics don’t take time to listen to the customer, jump to a conclusion that isn’t correct and don’t want to admit they don’t know the problem and throw parts at the problem.

2 Likes
23

Your ignorance is causing your paranoia. You think a mechanic ripped you off by charging you 900 dollars to replace a timing chain. There was something wrong with your car or you would not have taken it to him. He did not design, build or maintain your car and you know nothing about its maintenance history for 100,000 miles. He charged you a reasonable price for the job and you car ran fine after he fixed it. The only reason for your dissatisfaction is your complete ignorance. The same thing is probably true of the transmission repair. You think he was riooing you off to want $1300 and then fixing it with used parts for $800. Because you plead poverty he gave you a fix that was not as good and he could not guarantee. He was trying to do you a favor and you bad mouth him to this day.

Any shop that knew what you are like would not let you in the door.

By the way, I am not and never have been a professional mechanic who is offended by your suspicions. It is just that I know enough about cars to tell from your own narrative that you have no basis for your suspicions. Yes people get ripped off on auto repairs all the time but it is usually because they insist on going to national tire and muffler chains rather than using a real mechanic. Not everyone who goes to a national chain gets ripped off, it is just that the percentages are higher.

4 Likes
24

I’ll make a wild guess . . . your car either stopped running, or it was running very poorly. Otherwise, you’d be driving your car, instead of bringing it to a shop for diagnosis and repairs. Any truth to that?

And then you condemn the mechanic because he did indeed find a problem?

When you have a toothache and head over to the dentist, do you then condemn him when he discovers a cavity?

Exactly who have you been talking to . . . ?

Nobody works for free. Dealerships typically charge upwards of $100/billed hour. Even good independent shops have labor rates approaching that. And a timing chain is typically several hours of labor

Please don’t let your frustration morph into badmouthing mechanics, seemingly without even any proof

You have a very active imagination, and you seem to think the worst of people

1 Like
25

They tend to get caught when trying to do some of their bull with someone knowledgeable.

26

I guess the lesson here is that there are lots of things that happen in our lives, and it’s truly impossible to cope with all of them. We decide which ones we can handle ourselves, and the rest we end up trusting someone else to do it. As a result there are times when we get good help, and times when we get cheated in one way or another. You can spend the rest of your life viewing everything with suspicion, attacking every possible slip-up or money grab as a catastrophic personal insult. It’s not. We are not each that important. Being a victim is an equal opportunity situation.

Life expectancy for a U.S. man born in 1900 was 46.3, for a woman it was 48.3, if my quick internet research was any good at all.

Life expectancy for a U.S. male born 1998 was 73.8, for a woman it was 79.5.

In 2014 it’s 76.4, for a woman it’s 81.2.

Maybe we’re getting cheated, lied to and fooled; maybe every mechanic is a thief, every doctor is a liar, and every repair bill is a scam. But I get a chance to live a lot longer than my Grandfather, and healthier along the way, so I’m not going to spend my life complaining.

4 Likes
27

If they suspect you might be knowledgeable when you drive in, they get more creative.
Yeah, they often get caught, but they just get even more creative.
Crooked people are determined to screw you no matter how hard they have to work at it. :grin:

1 Like
28

I’ve had situations where a co-worker took their car to a mechanic and what they told her was completely different then what they told me. Price difference in repair was about $500.

29

Exactly!
While it is very noble for the honest mechanics in this forum to sincerely believe that the dishonest people in their profession amount to only 1%, that de minimus figure is just not realistic.

4 Likes
30

“We don’t buy medical textbooks to study before we go to the doctor.”

I do. My experience with doctors is akin to OP’s with mechanics. I only have to go to a doctor about every ten years. Next to last time I went was 3 or 4 years ago, for an infected toe nail. He did surgery so badly that it turned into SIBO, and I have been awfully sick for a couple years.

When the SIBO knocked me down so badly I couldn’t get out of bed. They took me to the same doctor. He told me it was bad circulation to the brain, and he prescribed not something for the circulation but a psychiatric medicine, which went in the waste basket.

And, it isn’t because I am in Mexico. It has been the same in the US.

However, I have often been told I am a statistical aberration. I am glad you all have better luck with doctors than I do.

In Texas, I take my Toyotas to the dealer, even though it may cost me more. So far they have properly fixed it every time I go there, and that has not been true with other mechanics. They give me a ride, free, and in most cases the car is ready the same afternoon, though once they had to overnight a part. So, before I take my car in, we look around to see if we will need anything with no car to get it.

31

Several years ago, I had access to the Latter Day Saints database on deaths in my part of Mexico. I think it was 1876, can’t remember perfectly, for a local municipio (county). I put all the ages of death in a spread sheet, and that year the average age at death was 8, due to a smallpox epidemic. At the same time, they had people dying in their 80’s and older.

At that time, if a child made it to the third birthday, they had a big special party. And, they still do, today, as a tradition.

In those days, most deaths were babies. Eliminate the baby deaths and average age at death goes up fast.

The vaccine was already developed, but it simply wasn’t available out here.

Some medical experts admit most of that increase in life expectancy is because with antibiotics, few babies die today, and fewer adults die of infectious diseased. Not superior doctors as such.

1 Like
32

I agree it’s not doctors that are better, it’s the tools they have. And we all know that good tools don’t guarantee a good result. But they sure do help. Our life expectancy and our cars’ life expectancy are much longer today that they ever were.

At age 20, in 1901 a man was expected to live another 42 years.
At age 20, in 2009 a man was expected to live another 57 years.

We win.

33

Comes right after Spring and before Fall…right?

That company did make a great 5-wheel self-steering rear trailer for donkey carts, I heard.

1 Like
34

At least you didn’t have to change the blinker fluid, that could have been $75, easily.

Seriously, just like we should have “cooking for yourself” classes in High Schools, we need to make sure they are able to pass a quarter-mile swim test, and balance a checkbook, and should be able to identify ten key parts of a motor vehicle. Sewing wouldn’t hurt none, either.

Stuff all kids need to know, BEFORE they are age 18. Don’t get me started on credit cards for college students…!

35

I don’t know which of my statements you were referring to, but I’d far, far rather see them learn mathematics, basic science, a bit of physics, some chemistry, reading comprehension, proper English (although I hated the subject), our constitution, our system of government, our history, a bit about the world’s other governments, and things that will give them the basic tools and knowledge to be able to do the other things.

With basic math, science, reading comprehension, and other basic skills come the abilities to learn how to cook, swim, balance a checkbook, learn automotive technologies, and so many other things. I’m a believer that the basics are critical and can lead a person anywhere they want to go.

2 Likes
36

Absolutely, I had a classic “liberal” education, covering all you mention and more. But many–far too many–young people in the US do not get beyond arithmetic and reading, I am afraid. Some might go into motor mechanics, learn a lot about that, vocationally, but still lack: swimming and cooking.

I also know PhDs in the STEM areas that would not know when they are being cheated by a mechanic. We need to work on both. That was what I was responding to:
“If they (mechanics) suspect you might be knowledgeable when you drive in, they get more creative. Yeah, they often get caught, but they just get even more creative.”

37

The county I investigated is so rural that one assumes there was almost no medical care, when the older people did die, ‘fevers’ (calenturas) was a common listed cause of death.

Actually, that is wrong. I am sure they always had old grannies who knew a lot of life saving tricks for their families.

The cousin I often mention is a herb expert. His daughter had a gall stone last year. She came and lived with him for three weeks. He gave her juice of a cactus every day, and the gall stone dissolved without surgery. He has helped me with car repairs and when I changed my brake pads, he had me show him how to do it so he could do it in the future.

And, when my sliding door latch on the 2002 Sienna would not open the door, he took off the upholstery and I was able to study the latch assembly and figured out there is an adjustment.

I learned by accident that meat tenderizer cures scorpion bites. He told me the Aztecs made a tea of papaya leaves for that. Tenderizer in Mexico uses papina, which comes from the milk of immature papayas. In the US, they use bromelain which comes from pineapples. They knew a lot before modern medicine, just not enough for infectious diseases.

Plus in his spare time he builds houses. :smiley:

My wife’s great-grandma, last of the Moctezuma’s (she married a Martinez so the surname was lost) as owner of the ranch, died at age 50 in 1916 of Typhus or Typhoid, I forget which one. That is certainly a fever, I think I gotta’ look it up when I get time. I think that is another one cured by antibiotics. Her son died around the same time in the same epidemic.

As a diagnostician, in my opinion, doctors today don’t seem to be able to diagnose much of anything without lab tests. Even when something is obvious. I understand there are legal reasons behind that in many cases, but watching and listening to them, they don’t seem to be able to if they wanted to. And, I honestly believe that 100 years ago, doctors did not have lab tests as we do today.

Here I do not need a doctor’s order for a lab test. I go to the local lab, tell them what I want, pay for it, they take the blood and when the results come back, I look it up on-line to see what it means. Yes, I have insecticide poisoning and so do most of my neighbors.

1 Like
38

STEM PhDs tend to know an awful lot about a specific subject. Just because you have a doctorate in quantum mechanics doesn’t mean you know anything about car mechanics. :wink:

3 Likes
39

It is probably true that as you go higher and higher in education you tend to know more and more about less and less, but I’m alluding to primary and secondary educational systems. With a good foundation a person can head in whatever direction they choose and make changes throughout their careers, as most people do.

Honesty and integrity cannot IMHO be taught in schools, and they should try only to the extent that they don’t tolerate dishonesty and lack of integrity. Their job is to teach foundational knowledge… and I can tell you that IMHO they’re derelict in their responsibilities.

I also believe firmly that mandatory two years of military service immediately after high school or college would go a long, long, long way toward teaching personal responsibility and teaching young people about the world at large. And I believe those traits would be passed along to their progeny.

1 Like
40

I value honesty above all else when dealing in any business, I don’t expect my mechanic or my doctor to be perfect and if I disagree with either, I expect them to be able to handle it.

I have been using the same muffler shop for almost 50 years, it is not a chain which is unusual but I use it because the first time I was there, an old couple came in with a big Mercury that was rattling and banging and were asking if they needed to get a new car or could it be fixed? They took their car into an empty bay and the owner put it up on the lift and looked at it. In 10 minutes he had them on their way with a re-attached heat shield on the converter at no charge and I decided I didn’t need to get exhaust work done anywhere else. The personnel at that 5 bay shop changed very slowly over the years. The owner no longer works there, if he is even still alive and the two managers since then both worked there for years before becoming manager. What has not changed, is the way they treat people.

3 Likes