The issues that everyone brings up apply to any auto shop. I think the main problem is that the quick lube shops are the first stop for an aspiring auto mechanic. If they are not properly trained, they can cause a lot of damage. I use a Jiffy Lube near me because they train their employees well and even employ quality control checks of every car that leaves the shop. I watched them change my oil a couple of weeks ago. The lube dude injected oil, waited a couple of minutes, checked the level and added a little, waited a couple minutes, checked again, and then gave the car to the cashier. She checked all the fluids, car cleanliness, and then checked the oil last. That made sure that the drain plug was in since the leak would have been obvious. Good practices and proper training can exist at any car shop. And they may also be absent from any car shop.
Could you see being involved with this process when it is applied to 90-100 cars on a Saturday? a man certainly earned his money on those days.
…it’s going to take awhile to change the because he was going to have to remove the GRILLE…
I hope you are aware that on some cars you actually have to remove the grill to get at the parking lights.
I used to go to the now defunct “Grease Monkey” chain. I stopped going after two bad visits in a row. First my filter was leaking, on the second I let them flush the coolant, and after smelling antifreeze, opened my hood and found my engine bathed in coolant. No leak, just very careless when filling. A co-worker had his plastic oil pan cracked and discovered it the next morning when his garage floor was a lake of oil.
There was another “Jiffy Lube” that I used to use that was pretty good. They would show you the dipstick, call out when oil was in, check to verify the engine had oil pressure when starting, etc. I only stopped going there because I could do the oil changes cheaper, their filters were cheap crap, and they tried to upsell me an air filter saying it was “very dirty” even though they just had changed it on the prior visit.
…Not on MY vehicle, friend!!!
I have done a few oil changes myself when I am short on cash but I generally take it to a specific grease monkey that our family has gone to for about 20 years, we have a 93 pathfinder that has 286,000 miles on it, and has about 90 oil change receipts on file at the store. We have not had one problem with them, and they even top off the oil for free between oil changes, so we stop in once a week for a free half quart of oil.
I use them for one thing and one thing only. An oil change. I will not let them sell me anything else.
Yeah, this JL has a full waiting room every Saturday. Sunday is even busy.
The old service station that sold gasoline, did oil changes, repaired tires and performed minor repairs in the 1950s and 1960s have mostly disappeared. These “Quicky Lubes” have replaced the service station. There were service stations that overcharged and did unnecessary service and repairs and now we have the “Quicky Lubes” that do the same thing. There were also good service stations and apparently good “Quicky Lubes”.
I do agree that mistakes can be made by very experienced people.Pilots with thousands of hours flight time make mistakes.
Distractions, rushing,stopping to help someone or answer a question posed by the vehicle owner standing next to them.
Mechanic errors are different than alot of professions where mistakes can be hidden.
As one mechanic told a doctor"you can bury your mistakes"
Well, I don’t hate them, but I live in a smallish town with only one quick lube place, and I know the owner and most of his employees have been there worked for him for a year or more. He doesn’t try the hard sell, very friendly. And since I really can’t change oil as cheap as he can. My quick lube place charges is less than $30 and when I factor in my time to change the oil, take the old oil to be re-cycled, the mess and everything it’s just cheaper for me to have them do it.
Most of the complaints I’ve heard about quick lube places I’ve also heard about at your local mechanic and dealer. Is it worst at a quick lube place, maybe, but how many oil changes does your mechanic or dealer do when compared to a quick lube place?
In most places, oil changes are handled by the least experienced person they have, and even small shop will often hire someone to handle jobs that don’t require a lot of experience.
Personally I think what you’re seeing is quick lube shops handle many times the oil changes than dealers and local mechanics, and you’re just see the same percentage of errors, but being a chain people can say quick lube did this to my car and someone else n say the same thing even when it was in a different town or a different quick lube location.
Do they hard sell, well my local dealer changed the oil on my car and a list that included at least 20 items that included a service they just performed a few months earlier (coolant flush and change)
Basically I do the same thing after every oil change, quick lube place or not, open the hood make sure everything is in the proper place, check the dip stick, and look under the car for oil leaks.
My opinion is subject to change with new facts.
An old mechanic friend of mine once told there there are fewer and fewer mechanics and more and more parts pullers. He once told me that the new mechanic only did what the computer told them to do the computer says pull this part and put a new part in, and if it doesn’t work, they are at a lost as what to do next.
This friend retired after 50+ years as a mechanic, he was the go to guy when nobody could figure out what to do next. I worked under him for two or three years before he retired and I learned a lot, sadly I was one of few the people there who took to the time to learn from him. He also talked me out of being a mechanic, he said the future wasn’t that bright anymore and I should peruse something else. I did and now I work with computers all day long.
I miss him to this day.
My opinions are subject to change with new facts.
I will ask if there will be a revision on what seems to be a wide spread belief amoung forum regulars of the advice “don’t stop at a quickie lube,even to ask for directions”?
We have been presented with data that makes me conclude that the same type of errors that happen at a quickie lube can happen at any other repair facility.
I’m sorry to hear of the hate for quick lube places; I used to work for one years ago and while we only had one accident while I was there (a woman’s vehicle came in with the radiator cap not screwed on properly, so one of our employees got burned when the cap shot off and hot antifreeze covered his forearm), we were meticulous about using the right filters and oils for each vehicle that came in. I had also heard stories of the local competitor (another quick-lube place) that would take transmission dipsticks and dip them in a cocktail of oil, transmission fluid, and who knows what else–then take the dipstick to the customer and convince him or her that they needed a transmission fluid exchange. These were things that horrified me, because I’m all about ethical business practices.
Besides, screwing up costs the company money and clients, and we (naturally) wanted to keep as many as possible.
Even though we did not have any bad oil changes while I was there, I still remember clearly the day I was holding an oil change special sign outside and got flipped off by a driver. There is a lot of hate out there, and it only takes one bad experience to ruin a company’s reputation.
On the extra services, everything that is in the database we refer to comes out of the owner’s manual for that particular vehicle model. In the end, it’s really more about preventative maintenance, which costs less than when something that could have been prevented goes seriously wrong. For example, a lady came in for an oil change, and we looked at the radiator reservoir and cap as part of our inspection–somewhere along the line, it looked like she had mixed the standard antifreeze with Dex-Cool, resulting in gelatinous gunk all over the reservoir and cap. Knowing that this was a potentially dangerous situation, we showed her the cap, explained the danger, and recommended strongly that she get the flush…which she adamantly declined. It bothered me a little to know that even though it was her choice, she could have paid $80 that day rather than $1500 (loose estimation) for a new radiator when it blows from bad antifreeze.
So, really, the recommendations are usually in the best interest of the client, though it does feel like there’s a laundry list every time a person comes in.
That’s just my two cents’ worth, though, having spent time working for a Jiffy Lube. Though I cannot speak for every location, the one I was at strove to be perfect in every service. That’s why I still go, because I have never had a problem.
~Kristel
I needed to make an emergency trip from DC to NY a few weeks ago. My regular mechanic is closed on Saturday and wouldn’t accomodate me on a Friday before I had to leave. There is a Mobil Quick Lube operation across the street, so I went over and got in line. In about 90 minutes I had the oil, a pair of brake lights and my rear differential fluid changed.They did check over the whole engine and suggested an item I did not ask for, the transfer case. Since I was not certain when it was last serviced, I deferred having this done until I got back from NY and checked my records. Everything together ran $145.00 and I was on the road Saturday. I was so pleased with the attention to specs and the speed of service that my “regular” shop is no longer welcomed to do these regular maintenance items. They usually hit me for $300.00 every time anyway.
“Mobil Quick Lube operation across the street”
What street?
For the sake of (us) others in the DC area…
Historicdc, your regular shop charges you $300 to change oil, put in a bulb and change differential fluid?
I sure would like to hear a response from your regular mechanic.
Too many times people have brakes done ,tune up ,tires installed and other repairs. When something goes wrong, they shout as loud as possible “I paid $1200 for a tune-up and the car won’t start first thing in the morning.”
The whole repair was $1200. Lets put everything in perspective and be honest without slandering a mechanic or shop, please.
I took it as saying “evertime I go there the bill ends up being 300.00” sort of like how Home Depot got the nickname of the “$100.00 store” as every trip there cost at least $100.00 (now it probably is closer to $300.00)
You can “bury” a mechanic’s mistakes, too. Junk yards contain mechanic’s errors, just like cemetaries contain doctor’s errors. And both leave live people behind to tell the tales.
A good mechanic is as hard, or harder, to find than a good doctor or barber. If you don?t have one take the time to find one; if you do, take your car there for everything. Some routine maintenance may cost a little more, but it?s the long term relationship that will pay real dividends either in work needed before something big goes wrong or in advice about the things that don?t need to be done right away.
I stopped going to quickie lube places for the same reason I no longer shop at Radio Shack. I find chirpy, inexperienced, unknowledgeable sale staff to be particularly annoying.
In my experience behind the counter the haters, almost without exception, were customers who didn?t know what they didn?t know and expected champagne for the price of beer.