Common Auto Repair Scams

Maintenance/Repairs
181

Metro Volkswagen of Irving, Texas. Took my 2008 rabbit in for an oil change and they dented my drivers side door. Dealership refused to repair the damage. Complaint has been lodged with VW of america and the local BBB.
Just prior to the oil change I had the car into the same dealership for the 20K checkup and since they were dishonest about that incident, I had the checkup redone at another shop.
One of the checkpoints for the 20k service is to check break pads. In less than 300 miles after the dealership service, another shop discovered I had less than 2mm remaining on the rear pads.

Stay away from Metro VW in Irving!

182

I took my car in for a safety inspection and the mechanic failed me for “bad ball joints” and wanted $200 to replace them. The thing is, I had personally just replaced the ball joints when I replaced a control arm the week before. Went to the state patrol to request a re-inspection of the “failed part” and of course it passed. The kicker is, they went to the mechanic that failed me and gave him a ticket!!!

183

I’ve taken my 2003 Accord to a dealership in ClearLake, Texas. These guys always have at least $1500 of “recommended” work no matter what they are actually working on. Keep in mind that their “recommendation” sounds more like a “has to be done or else”. If I ignore them and take my car in a few months later, all the things on the previous list are no longer there but there are new ones. In one case they said my battery was going to die any day but it laster for two more years. A buddy of mine took his car in and was told he needed new front tires; well, he had gotten tires at the same dealership only two weeks earlier. Rediculous way to do business. Needless to say
never going back there again. I think shops should have a “Car Talk” certified rating; I’ll trust them if I see that.

184

I inherited my father’s 1979 Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter. The Bus. I had grown up with the car and was excited to be its rightful owner after all these years.
The bus had been driven into my father’s garage, and sat there for 5 years without running. I brought it to one of the only shops in my area that will work on air-cooled VWs, and asked them to get it running. Months later, and over $7,000.00 later, I got the car back. It ran erratically for 6 months and had to be towed home several times. After one such tow, it sat for two weeks until I tried to start it again. It Started! Then stalled. Then it started smoking. Then it caught on fire and the Fire Department had to come extinguish it. I had it towed to the shop that did the “repairs” and we left it at $2500 OBO until I figure out what to do. That was two years ago. What can I do?

185

My Dad maintained all of our cars, spent many hours fetching tools and learning how to identify problems by sound. Dad has been gone for many years so having the car serviced is a walk down memory lane. I have found a wonderful mechanic, Jerry Blayney, City Automotive in Temple City, Ca., he has the values of my Dad, excellent work at a fair price. I found City Automotive after another repair shop, City Automotive, El Monte, Ca. turned simple replacements into a series of mechanical problems on a '95 Montero.
I was stopped at a signal light when the Montero gave signs of electrical problems, dash panel flicker plus the engine sounded like it wanted to shut down if I didn’t increase the rpm’s. Silly me pulled into the repair shop sitting on the opposite corner for a test. The shop provided a quote showed me where the plug wires were shorted out and said the car would be ready that afternoon, they call me when ready. While I was waiting for my ride home I watched the mechanic crawl up into the engine compartment and begin dismantling. I should have stopped him and left because of poor work habits, instead of using a small container to put the nuts & screws in he was placing them on various flat surfaces around the compartment, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

They didn’t call that day and the afternoon of day 2 I called, they asked me to come down they had “discovered” something. They said once they “repaired” my car and started it there was a new noise. I stood in front of an open hood with the older mechanic while the youngin started the engine
 I had to yell at the kid to shut it down, it was like two cast iron skillets banging, then the older guy told me I had two options for replacing the engine, both higher than the resale value of the car. Then I mentioned it seems like a screw or bolt might have fallen into the open air filter and sucked into the engine because it didn’t sound like that when I drove in. Then another fellow joined in with his explaination of the age of my car and these things can happen unexpectedly and back to talk about which engine replacement choice I wanted them to proceed with. Long story short, they agreed to check into the possible cause, 3 months later I’m told the car is ready. It started without the banging engine noise, I paid and left. The next day I drive 3 miles to the grocery store, the air conditioning doesn’t work plus a burnt odor & smoke coming from the engine compartment Yikes! I pop the hood, yes there is smoke burnt oil on the engine & now wires dangling from the area they worked on. This is when I found City Automotive, at no charge he reviewed the car and reported back they didn’t hook up the wiring harness it was touching on the engine, a few other wires had not been connected (they connected), the a/c has no freon, the radiator was filled with only water they must have dismantled the engine and there was poor workmanship putting in back together again. Back to the original place with the list, 1 wk later I can pick up the car. The a/c blows cold, coolant, I drive off the lot and there is a grinding sound from under the car, yikes! U-turn and yes they forgot to connect something underneath. Next day the a/c stops entirely. It seemed the best thing to do was never have Auto Repair World touch my car and have City Automotive take care of my baby which runs strong at 107,570 miles. I don’t use the oil changing chains, co-worker’s have been ripped off and City Automotive charges a fair price and checks everything. When I was younger fuel station attendants would check oil and tried to short stick me, lucky for me Dad had taught me to always check the oil & tires before I drove the car.

186

A car I had years ago when I was in my 20?s died one day. I had AAA tow it to a gas station/garage they recommended. I was out of town the next day while the car was being looked at to determine the problem. When I returned to the shop they told me it was a problem with the engine (duh!). I asked for a written estimate of what the repair would cost and was told by the owner he would not do that. He said it would cost whatever he said it would and that might be $1 or it might be $300. Obviously not happy with that response I told him to put the car back together and I would have it towed back to my apt. I guess he figured because I was a young, blond woman I was stupid. When the car was brought back to my apt., I found the engine completed taken apart and dumped in a box in the back of my hatch. I was furious. But I had a friend?s brother do the repair for which he charged a reasonable amount. A week later the gas station was completely flooded to the point of needing the gas pumped out of the tanks on the property and $$$ worth of damage to the shop.

187

I don’t know why it took me this long to remember this song:

Gotta love Alan Jackson

188

My great grandmother was a victim of this scam. My dad starting realizing that they were scamming her when he would look at her work orders. She ended up getting money back but I was too little to recall how much.

189

Forgive me for saying so, but the mere fact that your battery continues to start your car does not necessarily indicate you were scammed, or there was an attempted scam.

As a fellow Civic driver, I can tell you my little battery can still start my little Civic engine long after I should have replaced the battery because it failed to hold a full charge. I can recognize the sound of my weak little battery when it is on its last leg, and it can be on its last leg for a long time, but it still starts the car.

Was it an attempted scam? Probably, but I am not yet convinced 100%.

190

Don Rosen Imports - Conshohocken, PA (Audi & Porsche) Got a check engine light on my Audi. Took it to the dealer. In ten minutes mechanic found a broken vacuum hose near the top of the engine. Replaced it in another ten minutes. Bill - $423 labor + $37 parts!!! Why $423? Because “the book” says this is 3.5 hour job, so they charged me for 3.5 hours even though it actually took them 20 minutes (they readily admitted that it took only 20 minutes). Quickly found a new shop.

191

That is how jobs are priced in most shops. This system protects you when a job takes longer than expected, and it means you pay by the job, not the clock. This system is not a scam. Posted labor rates and having a written estimate will protect you from paying more than you think you should pay.

192

My favorite recently was when I took my 2002 F-150 into a repair shop. The check engine light went on, and after getting it scanned, they told me it was probaly the MAF Sensor. They said to replace it it would cost about $600.

I went to autozone and bought it myself. $130 with a core deposit, and a $20 set of tools. $450 for labor? I think not. Needless to say, I wont even go there again to get my Truck tested for state emissions.

193

I once took my '74 Dodge van into a tune-up shop for a California smog test. Now, before I took it in, I did check that everything was okay with it, including the timing. The guy tested it and said that I would need him to work on it before passing the test because the “timing was retarded, and this causes it to ping.” Booogus!, I thought (only excessively advanced timing would cause pinging), and I took the van home and checked the timing again–it was right where I had set it. (I recovered my testing fee on this one with a complaint to the Bureau of Automotive Repair.)

That tune-up shop soon went out of business, and before I was wise to this guy, I later went to his new operation in a new location, a much bigger auto repair business. This place made a big deal out of giving each customer a comment card to say what a wonderful job was done on their car. The waiting room had a bulletin board plastered with a selection of these cards, so everyone was happy to be repeat customers. Here is how this place attempted to gain my repeat business:

One winter I had them replace a water pump on a minivan. The next summer I discovered an air conditioning hose was completely disconnected, nowhere near the water pump or belt. (Later, a new mechanic told me that he once had seen a technician being led away from this place in handcuffs by the cops.) I had the air conditioning fixed by different mechanic, but not until I had already been victimized again by the repeat-business place, and this is my favorite:

They did some brake work on the minivan, which had drum brakes on the rear. Then I drove from Long Beach to Palm Springs, stayed a few days, then pulled into a gas station to fuel up for the trip home. When I tried to leave, the parking brake wouldn’t release. It was locked up so bad that the car couldn’t be driven–one rear wheel would not turn at all, and after removing the wheel, the drum couldn’t be budged.

I had it towed to a local repair shop in Palm Springs, and it wasn’t easy to find a place open that Saturday evening. The Mexican guys cheerfully worked on it for some time with Sabado Gigante on the TV, but it was apparent that they had a heck of a time getting the brakes back together. When I got back home I noticed that the rear brake adjustment was loose, so I went to work on it. I was going nuts trying to get it set correctly when I finally realized that the drum brake adjusters were swapped, left wheel to right wheel! Mystery solved: The repeat-business place had swapped the adjusters. The trip to Palm Springs didn’t require much backing up, but after backing out of a few parking spaces one brake became loose enough so that something fell apart in the drum at the gas station when I set the parking brake, and it jammed.

194

I have been burned by this practice before, but $423 for a 20 minute job was by far the most egregious. And I have NEVER had the experience where a job took longer than the book and I was charged for only the book estimate. My new mechanic assures me that if a job takes longer than the book, the dealer will have some excuse as to why the book does not apply, and I will be charged for every minute, and perhaps a few extra. If I was a cynical person, I might suspect that perhaps the book time estimates might be “slightly” inflated.

195

Were you lied to or deliberately misled by someone at Don Rosen Imports, or did you just not like the way they do business?

The title of this thread is “Common Auto Repair Scams.” In order for something to be defined as a “scam,” there has to be fraud of some kind.

I agree that charging $423 for a 20 minute job is bad business, but I don’t see why anyone would call it a “scam.”

Your new mechanic is probably a stand-up guy, and going to a dealership is not usually the cheapest way to get anything done, but your mechanic also has a conflict of interest. Of course he is going to bad-mouth the dealership. Doing so puts food on his table.

If you let someone charge you extra, over and above the written estimate, you should have stood up for yourself. Unlike the situation you described above, that is fraud, and that is a scam.

And I have NEVER had the experience where a job took longer than the book and I was charged for only the book estimate.

Perhaps this has never happened to you. It has never happened to me either, at least as far as I know. However, there are plenty of situations where it might have happened without my knowledge, but even if it never happened to your or me, that doesn’t logically rule out the possibility that it rarely happens elsewhere.

196

You can’t always just go with the guy who tells you everything is fine, though. It’s possible that one or more of those items were worn out, and the Ford dealership just missed them.

197

This is not a scam though - it’s just incompetence.

198

I doubt it. Cars, unlike TVs, do not get cheaper as the years go by. My parents paid $1200 for a TV 15 years ago, whose same size would now cost me 1/3 of that. You can’t say that about cars.

199

I had a 1991 Jeep Wrangler and the check engine light came on. I took it to my local dealer and told the service manager that the light that meant my jeep was lonesome and wanted to visit the dealer had come on. I asked him what caused it to come on and he whipped out a service order and said that they would check out and give me an estimate. When I told him that he wasn’t going to work on it and I just wanted them to turn the light off and asked him again what caused it to come on, he said “Oh, 80,000 miles”.

200

Dear Car Talk,

I have lived in Malaysia for 2 years and wanted to tell you of this not uncommon car repair scam. If you drop your car off for repairs you may want to check the odometer before and after you get the car back. When leaving the car, the repairman might say it is going to take three weeks to get the parts in when in actuality he fixes it the fist day and then rents it out for the next 20 days. No joke.

Tom
Binghamton, NY