As I have experienced too many times to be able to count, helping some people resulted in no “reward” for the person extending the courtesy. My favorite saying became… No good deed goes unpunished.
I figured long ago if I have a choice between not getting paid and doing nothing or not getting paid and working, I am usually better off doing nothing.
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I had a Subaru owner from Kiowa, KS get upset with me once over a motor swap. He dropped by and said that he found another engine from a local boneyard and they would deliver it to me.
I swapped the engine and for reasons unkown this engine was the sweetest running Subaru engine I’ve ever seen. I was actually amazed at it.
He picked the car up, paid me, and came back in a little bit to tell me how great the car ran.
Two weeks later I get a call and he said I installed the wrong engine. I installed the engine they delivered per your instructions. He said he wrote down the serial number and that engine was not it. First i had heard of the Ser. No. bit
I said why bother? You won’t find a better engine than what you have. No go. He insisted I do the swap again for half price “because I had done it once so I knew the process”. Sorry , the price is the same because the process is the same no matter how many times it’s done. I suggested the next engine might be problematic so he should leave well enough alone.
Nope. So I installed the other engine which was delivered and of course it turned out to have some oil pressure problems along with compression dropping in a few cylinders.
.
I lost him as a regular customer because of his ridiculous decision to ignore my advice and his ensuing decision to blame me for the whole thing.
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Who cares? That sounds like the parts supplier’s problem, not the end-user’s problem. What a fool.
I believe that MOST mechanics are like this. But unfortunately there are far too many of the bad apples that they are easy to find.
I’m going to digress from cars a moment to reply to @common_sense_answer’s and @asemaster’s comments about teaching a kid to play golf. You both are right.
One of my older brothers caddied every weekend as a kid for my dad playing golf with men from his workplace. Yep, he saw and heard both the good and bad sides of behavior and language. Dad made sure my brother understood just what was good and bad, what made the distinction, and how to evaluate a person from the overall contextual character shown and which sorts of specific details matter most.
All three of my brothers tried playing golf but quickly gave it up for other activities they preferred. I, on the other hand, was the kid who fell in love with the game the first time I played at age nine. By the time I was sixteen I was my dad’s regular golf partner almost every weekend the rest of his life.
While I was still a girl I was protected from seeing and hearing most bad behavior both because my dad was protective and because most men behave decently around girls and women and quickly shut down those who don’t. Even so, I’ve encountered my share of crude behavior on golf courses, including by some women.
As in other sports or group activities, being exposed as a kid to a range of adult character is real world education. Done judiciously by a parent careful of when, where, in what circumstances, and around whomever, teaching a kid how to conduct himself or herself as the only one or one of a few youngsters in an otherwise adult group can impart some valuable life lessons.
The lessons I learned on the golf course have proven valuable in situations ranging from keeping my cool during my first driving test when I got a tester well known for doing everything he could to flunk women of all ages to when dealing with the issue of the torque converter on my current car.
I will add that having spent some years as the rare woman playing during male dominated weekend golf taught me lessons I have kept in mind participating here in this forum which also is predominantly male among regulars and even among guest posters asking for help.
I now respectfully relinquish the floor back to more car related talk and shall put away my soapbox until next time I dare drag it out to stand on and prattle. 
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We have quite a nice variety of cars and trucks that are parked at our club parking lots on any given day, sports cars, classics, you name it.
That said, we get lots of visiting cars when parents bring their children to our highly popular summer Junior Golf program. It’s free for all kids and clubs are furnished for those needing them. It meets many times each summer. The kids in our small northern town don’t have many quality activity opportunities and this is terrific!
That program is run completely by volunteers under the direction of 2 women, former LPGA pros who have played in many countries! To watch how well behaved and polite these kids become and the many skills they develop, besides sportsmanship, is awesome. And these Junior Golf programs have sprung up all over the country. Not only are they an excellent opportunity for young folks, but they assure a strong future for the game.
Many people fail to realize just how much of the nation’s business actually takes place on golf courses. So, it’s an excellent “game” to have some skin in.
As these kids grow up playing the game they will buy a variety of nice vehicles to park at the club. Also, most will develop the integrity necessary to guarantee they won’t be ripping anybody off, even if they decide to become mechanics!
CSA
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Alright story time ; This past June, the A/C on my Mustang went out for the 3rd time in three years. The service department at the dealership I had bought it from after several attempts to rip me off had exhausted my supply of good will towards them. So I decided to go to a different dealership as judging by the symptoms (film on the interior glass, slight chemical smell, then a lack of cooling) pointed to the evaporator core being bad ( a well known problem with the S550 Mustangs).
So I went over to the dealership explained what was going on, gave them my opinion of what I thought it was, and they took the car in. The next day I received a call from the service department. Saying that the found a hose that was leaking. And it would a be $550 fix. I was happy that it would be a relativity cheap fix, but also skeptical because the hose in question was on the front side of the firewall (allegedly) and not in the cabin. Which begs the question, where did the film on the inside of the windshield/windows come from? Anyway, a day later I pick up the car and enjoy ice cold A/C for about six weeks
In the middle of August, my A/C again stops producing cold air. The interior glass is still getting covered in a film pretty quickly (I had been cleaning the glass once a week). So I go back to the dealership and again, say that my A/C isn’t working, and reiterate that I think it’s the evaporator core. They take the car in, and the next day I get a call and shockingly their diagnosis is that it’s the evaporator core and it’s going to be a $2500 fix. Now I know that it’s a labor intensive job and that the dash has to come apart. But that $2500 seemed high based on what their stated labor rate was and what the parts cost involved was (even allowing for a 100%+ markup).
So I start looking through TSB’s, and find the latest one regarding the replacement of the evap core on 2015-2017 Mustangs. The job books out at 5.2 hours. And the parts list retails for around $360 I print out the entire bulletin (which was from 2018 mind you). And head down to the dealership. I get to the service counter, and decide to see if they were willing to work with me at all (the car was only 3 months out of warranty and 4k miles under the mileage limit). The service advisor said that they were not willing to do anything, but I could call Ford Corporate and see if they were be willing to do anything. I then asked her how they came to the $2500 figure for the repair. She pulled up the work order and pointed out “what the technician had put in for labor and parts”. I then produced the TSB, and showed her what Ford’s opinion on how many labor hours and what parts the job requires was, which was roughly half that of what the original estimate was.
I asked to speak with the technician, and hear his side of it. I was told that was not possible, I then asked to see the Service Manager, that was possible. The Service Manger comes out and the service advisor gives him a rundown of what’s happened . He took my stack of papers back to his office, and then returns about ten minutes later, and says that the TSB is correct and that’s what they should be going off of. I then mention that I had paid about $550 two months ago to have the A/C fixed and that the original diagnosis was incorrect and would like to have that $550 credited towards this repair. The Service manager then goes off to speak to the technician, and returns after a few minutes, saying that the hoses they replaced were indeed leaking so they couldn’t credit me anything, but fully understands the optics of the situation from my point of view and will sell the parts for the job at cost. This incident also had the side effect of me being able to get a slightly better deal on a new truck (I’ll get into that in few days when I post my review of the truck.)
So the price of the evaporator core replacement went from $2500 to around $1200, because I didn’t blindly believe what the “expert” said.
In my experience with dealership mechanics, it seems that some of them are just unilaterally making the decision on how many hours they want to charge to for doing a job. Or simply going with whatever published method of doing the repair books out at the most labor hours. I’ve had to “correct” them on no fewer than three occasions in the past 3 years. There seems to be little oversight going on.
I never use dealers once the car is out of warranty. Find good reputable independent shops. I understand you going with it just barely out of warranty but I would never take anything they are obviously not going to cover to a dealer.
It’s not that the car was just out warranty. I’m fine with that. What I wasn’t cool with was that they wanted to charge me double what it should cost (per Ford corporate). To me it seemed an awful lot like the mechanic was padding the bill, and may or may not have done unnecessary work when I brought it in the first time, with him knowing that I would soon return with the same problem.
I do have two independent shops that I trust and that are significantly cheaper than the dealership. However I thought that the dealer would be a better place for this particular repair as they are likely to have encountered it and performed the repair more much more frequently that the independent shops.