Should I Pay a Mechanic Who Screwed Up?

Like every Supreme Court nominee in the last 50 years has said in their confirmation hearings, “I would have to familiarize myself with all of the details of the particular case to make a judgment.”

So would I…but we’re NOT going to get that here…How times have we received complaints from people about Jiffy Lube??? All any of us can do is make comments/opinions on what’s been said…unless you have personal knowledge NOT from this forum.

Tiredaq, you were far more lenient than I would have been. If they refused to remake the lenses or give me my money back, I would have contacted my bank to reverse the charge on my check card or credit card.

How can you say that…You’re only hearing ONE side of the story…JUST KIDDING…

I agree…Similar thing happened to me. Company called Lens Crafters made a pair of glasses for me…but switched the lens. They REFUSED to make me a new pair unless I paid for them. Luckily my insurance company went after them and they ended up making me a new pair.

Well nice stories but I find it hard to believe that anyone anymore that has been in business for any length of time, would put themselves on the hook for a repair they weren’t sure of. From my experience, the first customer order is to “diagnose noise, engine miss, engine light, etc.”. Once the diagnosis is done, they give you a call and say it needs this, and this is the price. If they are not sure they say they “think its the EGR but not sure, and do you want to try it for the $500?”. It’s up to you if you want to try it or not but if it doesn’t work, the customer took the risk knowing full well the possible outcome. And this is from the consumer’s point of view. I’m not a mechanic but there have been a number of times when we both were stumped and I told them to try this or that.

You have to know my brother. When he found the problem, he felt stupid for not figuring it out in the first place, even though the factory representative didn’t suggest this as a possibility. My brother had another experience replacing a water heater on a Sunday afternoon in a shopping mall. This was an electric water heater, but it was a 480 volt unit. He replaced the water heater and thought he had followed the wiring diagram correctly, but the water wasn’t being heated. My brother contacted the manager of the mall who said, “Don’t worry about it–that is why we have electricians”. Well, my brother fretted about it all evening, so the next day he went back to the shopping mall and went in to see the manager about the problem. The manager just laughed and said, “The problem was really simple. You didn’t know that there was a timer between the shutoff on the circuit panel and the heater. The heater only comes on at night”. I was with my brother once when he received a telephone call about a dripping faucet. He asked the caller about the make of the faucet, then told him what repair kit to buy at Home Depot and how to install it. He then told the caller that if it didn’t solve the problem, he would make a service call. “You just cost yourself a job”, I said. “No”, he replied. “I just generated more work. The caller will fix his faucet, be happy about calling us, and then recommend us to his friends”.

My late father taught me not to get worked up over the small stuff. It worked for him–he lived to be 97. I hope to live this long so I can keep on misdiagnosing cars for people who post problems on this board!