Anyone ever seen any negative reviews on Car Talk’s Mechanic Files.
My regular mechanic just bought a shop in town that has been well-known for years as a bit “less than honest and competent.”
He is trying to turn it around. But I just looked at Mechanic files and see a bunch of very positive posts from several years ago and nothing negative at all.
Knowing that people tend to not reward the good and scream and yell about the bad, makes me a bit suspicious about the whole thing.
Just as a suggestion, there could be a possibility of legal issues for slander or libel if they started allowing negative stuff. I think, by memory, that files specifically requests tales of good mechanics.
A few months ago, my daughter-in-law’s old Ford wouldn’t start, and a local shop selected at random said the motor was shot. I looked at the Files, and found several mechanics with positive tales for Danville, VA.
One, though, had a large number of real positive remarks, way more than any other. I told him; they had the car towed, and found the problem was a frozen a/c compressor/clutch.
So, we selected that mechanic simply because there were just too many positive reports to be anything but a good mechanic. The others that may have had only one positive report might have been just flukes that a customer was happy, but that many excited tales much like ours was a good sign.
I added another success tale to that specific shop.
I got to looking at the “mechanic files” and looked up the shops in my area. Not a lot and I have dealt with most of them.
One in particular isn’t very good and has had many complaints against them, yet they have raving reviews on Car Talk’s Mechanic Files.
One has to wonder.
Yeah, it makes me wonder, too. I love Tom & Ray and am a regular radio show listener and they tend to promote the Mechanics File feature.
The all positive reviews reminds me of Zappos.com, where I bought a pair of shoes, the shoes were nowhere near the quality described, although seriously, probably worth close to what I paid. So, I made a fairly negative review, noting that while probably worth the price paid, the shoes were no where near what was described. The review never was posted.
So, although, Tom and Ray, I salute you…I am reluctant to trust "Mechanics File if all that are posted are “positive reviews.” Where is the worth in that???
There was a pretty lenghty thread about this a few months ago that you might be able to find with the search function. Eventually, someone from the website did post and confirmed that they do not post negative reviews on it for various reasons, mostly because they wanted the site to “be something positive” and not get involved in a bunch of mudslinging.
Thanks for clearing up the mystery Jack. I obviously missed the post.
Yes, basically this web site has a policy of not posting negative reviews in the Mechanics Files section, thus rendering less than useless in my opinion. A garage could get 10 negative and 5 positive reviews, but you will only see the positive ones. Another garage might have 5 positive and no negative reviews, on this site they will appear to be the same quality.