Reason enough to change your own oil

[Skyco]

One of my sons worked for a while at a very popular local restaurant chain,
he would not eat there though. If people only knew....the stuff he saw was disgusting.

My pet peeve at quickie oil changes, and I've seen this a bunch- they'll take the oil fill cap and lay it with the inside down on the dirty radiator support, picking up who knows how much grit and dirt, which of course falls into the engine at some point after the cap is replaced, IF it was replaced. One of my coworkers had a oil change place tell him his fill cap was missing- their response was interesting when he told them they were the last ones to touch it at the previous oil change.
I'm forced to use those places on my company vehicle but I will nevertake one of my personal vehicles to one.

 

[sweep]

Dishonesty is RAMPANT in the auto and home repair businesses.

!

5-6 years ago Dateline "broke" a furnace by unhooking a wire in plain site and then calling in heating companies to fix it just to see what happened. They placed the wire right in front and you had to have seen it when opening the service door. I believe only one company out of 15-20 said the wire was loose and charged a reasonable service fee to hook it back up. The rest hooked up the wire and did other repairs. Repairs ranging from needing new switches to complete blower motors etc. It's been awhile since saw it but nearly all of them saw the loose wire and hooked it back up so they had to know that was the problem. I think 1 or 2 guys never noticed the loose wire,and could not make the connection and could not get the furnace to work but were honest enough and said that they could not fix it.

So out of 15-20 contractors 3 or so were honest and probably some of the other were just winging it and guessing/incompetant and were not dishonest but it's still indicitive of dishonesty in many industries.

 

[dodge man]

Not a big suprise to me. I've always worried about that stuff hapening. I bought a used 2002 GMC truck about a year ago, 100,000 miles, and I had them change all the fluids, transfer case, tranny, front and rear ends, antifreeze-everything. I checked all the service points and it sure looked like they had done the work. If they didn't, they went through a lot of effort to make it look like they did the work. The tranny fluid is easy, you can tell just by looking.

 

[Mace Canute]

Years ago I was talking with a friend's dad and he recounted how he once worked at a garage in his youth...must have been back in the 50's, eh. He said one of his jobs was to carefully scrape all the crude off valve covers and around head gaskets, etc to make it appear that they had done a valve job on an engine when in fact all they did was take it out for a good hard run and "blow the carbon out". In conjunction with a minor tune up (that the customer paid for of course), the cars always ran better afterwards. Talk about a racket!

 

[ultrarunner]

The local Chevrolet Dealer has a free standing two bay Quick Lube

Customer waiting area is on the other side of a big window... anyone that cares to look can see the oil draining and the old filter laying on the screen.

The do charge $34.95

 

[5030]

Besides the resturant, I worked at a gas station for a few months. That was back when they had full service and you pumped gas and washed windows and checked the underhood fluid levels. I remember the schister that owned the station, it was a Union 76 to be exact always wanted us to check the fluid, especially the windshield washer fluid and refill it. He sold 'concentrated' washed fluid in pint bottles for 50 cents back then. I caught him refilling the pint bottles from a gallon jug of premix one time....

He was a real cracker jack. There was a condom machine in the mens room that he refilled, after he stuck a pin in each condom package.

I didn't stay there very long. I didn't use the condoms either.:laughing:

These 'quick lube' scams are nothing new really.

 

[brucew44guns]

I'm 66 years old, still totally capable of changing my oil in every engine I own. My wife thinks I should ease up, go to town for this service.
I use excellent lube products, buy decent name brand filters, and when I get done I know I'm good to go.
You would think---that with what they charge for a tranny flush at a Jiffy Lube, there is plenty of profit to enjoy even if the new oil and filter go in. It's over a pit, easy access, this was just plain old thievery and greed. Good on the news channel for squealing on them.

 

[lockhaven]

Mr tire has a great racket with their brakes. They provide pads for life free of charge but will turn the rotors needed or not every time. since they cut so much off you need a rotor replacement every other brake job. And since the rotors are not up to standard that is quite often. I had 160,000 miles on my factory pads before the Mr tire attack. The pads they put on lasted 11,000, the local mechanic doing some other work told me that new pads were necessary and showed them to me they were very thin. He replaced them no need to turn the rotors as they were fine. I now have 220,000 miles and the pads still look good.

 

[lockhaven]

sorry miss typed "PADS" not "Rotors" are not up to standared

 

[Fixemall]

I was reminded of this thread last night, was servicing a 4wd s-10 for a friend, truck belongs to his son. I told him the trans needed servicing and he said it was done last fall and not to worry about it...long story short I told him I would do it for parts cost because it needed it and he is already in deep with other repairs I am doing. I removed the pan to discover the previous mechanic stripped two pan bolts, left off a bolt on the trans shield, glued the wrong gasket to the pan to make it work, never properly scraped the old gasket and there was a lot of old sludge in the pan...two hours later it was fixed proper, including three new bolts and a powder blasted and painted pan.
Years ago I worked for a service and parts place that was very honest and still in business, owner told me straight out that there was no screwing around or he would take me out back and shoot me, I only think he was half kidding and at 15 I learned quickly to do things right and take pride in my work.