It is not only the cheap places the local Dodge dealer charged me $1200 to fix the miss in my Dodge Dakota. It would start missing after 40-45 miles of driving. I checked every thing I could and could not find any thing wrong, so out of desperation I took it to the dealer. 45 miles from the dealer it starts missing , you bet they just hooked it up to the computer cold nothing was wrong so they put a ECU and all new sensors on. So I took it to a Local one man shop and he told me to go for a fifty mile drive, make sure it really misses. brought it back to him with out shutting it off. He hooked up the computer and a fuiel pressure gauge. the electronocs where fine but the fuel pump had a bad bearing and the presssure droped at 40 to 50 miles of driving. Repair cost $300 ran many years after that. Have not been back to the dealer since.
I own two repair shops. Its been my personal experience the last 5 - 10 years that almost no-one comes in and asks for a tune-up without actually having some sort of performance problem. That having been said, it is the job of our service writers to determine why you want a tune-up. Are you really trying to do a 30k,60k,90k service? Is your gas mileage down? IS YOUR CHECK ENGINE LIGHT ON? This is the most important thing that our service writers do. If I had a dollar for every customer who tried to hide information from us, thinking that the more info he gave us, the higher the bill would be, I'd have alot more dollars. The reverse is true. The more info the shop has, the less time it takes to check a problem and figure out exactly what it's going to take to solve the customers real problem. Anyhow - none of us were there. None of us know what was said. I, however, would bet that either the customer in this case tried to diagnose a problem and didn't give all the facts, OR - the service writer didn't tell the guy working on the van what all of the symptoms were, OR - the spark plug changer guy didn't know how to determine through his "diagnostics" that a miss-fire could require a compression test, block test, etc... Unless your belt came off and the engine overheated, there's no way that spark plugs and wires caused a head gasket failure, IF it even has a bad head gasket. Now I am certainly not sticking up for pep boys - they hire wanna-be's and they are the most dangerous people to work on todays vehicles. Hell, the pep boys around the corner from one of my shops put 4 starters on a nissan altima 2 years ago. 4 starters. 4 times. They couldn't get it to start every time. One outta 6 times, it wouldn't start. The guy finally brought it to my shop where we tightened the negative battery cable (at no charge) and fixed his problem. DUH. You need a block test first to verify what's what.
I do all my one work 02 ford ranger,96 dodge caravan,sons 97 toyos(2) daughters saturn,but son-in law was in a rush and i didnt have time but i feel bad that i said "take it to pep boys its only a tune-up"famous last words.mike
"Burger King could probably sue you for defamation of character for being compared to Jiffy Lube; after all, I've never seen oil leaking out of their deep fryers....." Big dif--Burger King has to PAY for any oil it leaks...we get to pay for the oil that PB leaks... "Your oil change cost extra, sir...we had to put in 26 quarts to get it out the door. Have a nice day!"
Pep boys had four locations in this general area. One, they tore down a historic theatre to put in a Pep Boys that closed in 2 years and has been empty since. If I need work done I can't do for whatever reason, I go to a Monro that the manager has a '57 Chevy wagon and is a car guy (he's also raced an IMCA mod). By getting him parts I get a little work done under the table now and then. Otherwise, I'd be trying to do still more in the driveway. When I need parts, I go to Advance or Napa... Pep Boys is usually more money and if it's for an old car, their computer doesn't even go back that far 9 times out of 10. To them "old" is your mom's '84 Buick Electra sedan. All you can do with this car is take it someplace else and find out for sure if they messed it up somehow. Could go either way. $350 for a tune-up, sheesh.. the belt's like $40, the plugs around $12, the wires what another $40.. so like $250 in labor? Now you know how they stay in business. The diagnostic check, whats that $150 to hook up the OBD computer and read what it says? Those things aren't usually cheap to start with, but 20 or 30 of them at that price aught to pay for it.
In my opinion: Most of these issues can be traced to employees these shops hire and the low wages their corporate offices allow them to pay. I spent two years as a General Manager at a Jiffy Lube. I left Jiffy to work for Pepboys as a Service Manager for two years after that (I no longer work for either). In those four years I never had any major issues. The only real problem I had was a stripped oil pan on a 68 Mustang. No Problem, I replaced it with a original used pan from a local mustang shop and the owner was pleased and continued to come back to my shop. Anyway the companys do not like paying their employees so some of them end up with rejects from other shops and/or young kids. At both of these places I fired half the staff in the first 3-4 months. I kept and attracted quality employees by being a fair manager and fighting for pay increases. My techs at Pepboys were some of the best and I still have them work on my personal vehicles (On the side for cost savings of course). And the young guys from Jiffy all became personal friends I still have today. As a whole it is undeniable that both places have terrible reputations. That fact was one of the largest issues I had to overcome while building a customer base. Having gone thru that I keep an open mind about most places but still recommend sticking with one shop for all your work. Smaller places usually pay more attention to detail. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Most Pepboys consider scanning for diagnostic codes and printing a waveform of the ignition system a diagnostic. Compression test was always more and by request only. My 2 cent Opinion.
I work for a BMW dealer and I will say that we do a Jiffy Lube/Pep Boys oil pan repair/replacement for being stripped or cross threaded at least once a month. We also had a customer that has a new 325 and he wanted to have a oil change done at Jiffy Lube. The shit oil filter they put in turned to mush and blocked a few oil passages and it cooked the motor. He bought a 14k motor for his car with 6,000 miles on it. Glad he saved the 30 bucks on doing it here. Moral of the story- If you give a damn about your car dont take it anywhere where someone making $7.00 is going to work on it and if you do decide that saving that money is worth the risk, dont complain if it gets fucked up. I feel bad for some of these terrible stories but can you really be that suprised with the caliber of people that you chose to work on your car???
A lesson of that is that you need a mechanic you can trust for anything you farm out and that you should let him do even those things you might think a chain could handle! I used an oil change place ONCE in my life on my '70 Nova in a moment of weakness because my driveway was a foot of ice...I'll spare you the horrors, but it took me three hours and more than the oil change cost to repair and complete the job. There was NO way it was going back to them so they could fix their damned mess--one more trip to Grease Monkey and the car would have been scrap! It boggles the mind that there are "trained specialist technicians" who can mess up EVERY step in an oil change on a simple, primitive, six cylinder car! I think I could train a baboon to do the job right in about 5 minutes! Anyone THAT bad is not just incompetent, he actually HATES his job and his customers. Parenthetical rant: This country is going to hell in a handbasket because of people who are in simpleton badly paid jobs that they RESENT because they consider themselves too good for that particular kind of work...even though they can't do the simpleton job correctly. Bah. Maybe we can trade them to India for more of those immigrants who have twice the English vocabulary of the average American and actually want to do their jobs and learn so they can move up...
man im 23 years old and i feel the same way, probably more strongly too, american work ethic SUCKS. AND they feel they need MORE money, look at the NYC subway workers. had a plumber try to rob me of over 800$ to fix something i fixed better than he would have for 75 bucks and 7 minutes of work. if the guy wasnt greedy and said ok 75 for a part i can get for 40, and 100 an hour, 1 hour minimum...i would have actually said yes. i am a supervisor/manager at my workplace, granted its nothing related to what i would call a "skill" just office work and more "brain" skill than anything, not at all what i would consider "hard" work. i ask my guys when they want a raise to write down 3 reasons why on a piece of paper.......9 out of 10 i get.. 1. I come in on time 2. i get the job done 3. i work overtime when asked -rant over.
All I have to say is to stay away from all of them. Whether it Checkers,AutoZone or Pep Girls. That's why all of the cool small town parts places where they have personell who have a clue are going by the wayside.Most of them can't compete with $11.00 rebuilt GM calipers and $10.99 brake pads. 30.00 Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Volare & last gen 5th Ave RWD front brake rotors.But I have worked the commercial side of the big guys parts system, they will do everything they can to undercut everyone in order to make a sale.Most of the counter help doesn't know much about cars of anykind anyway.It's good to have a place like the HAMB where one can source take off parts from anothers newly bought project that requires some personalization.Another point here is that this is also an educational tool- I believe many of us learn things here that we wouldn't be able to see until much later.There are many good minds on this site.
There are good, decent people employed by many of these "chain/corporate" Automotive stores; however, by and large, there usually is not much financial incentive for a talented mechanic to establish a career in one of them. In my experience, most of the employees only know what the computer tells them, and the same is true of their Company-Formula training. I don't like to be judgemental if I can avoid it, but some of these employees really are out of their league when it comes to "hands on" mechanics and repairs. At level best it's "Buyer Beware"!!! You really need to be careful about who you're dealing with out there! If it's not on the computer, it must not exist! or, whataya' mean ALL small block chevy gasket sets are universal? How can they all be the same? (prior to 88)
i'm the first one to bitch about pep boys or auto zone, seems like all their employees are morons, heaven forbid you should ask for a part that isn't in the easy search thing on their computer. but for the record where i work we get tons and tons of dodge/plymouth/chrysler minivans in with bad head gaskets. sometimes the timing just sucks. and they definitely wouldn't check the compression as part of a tune up, at least we wouldn't, and sadly who knows if the pep boys guys know what compression is. not sure which motor the van had, 3.3 or 3.8, but one of them (forget which) it'd be real real tough to get a compression tester screwed into the rear head, you almost have to be a contortionist just to get the plugs out.
During the day, I'm a technician Chevrolet dealership, so I'll gladly dispute that. Most "full blown repair shops" don't tolerate "shady repair ethics" from technicians. I'm not sure you have stopped to consider it, but those of us with good training (ASE Master Tech, factory training, etc) and good ability make what I discreetly refer to as a "shitload of money" per hour. Consider that here in podunk, a good tech can make upwards of $35 per billed hour, and in some metro areas it's closer to $50. Why would any of us risk that with "shady repair practices"? Better yet, do the math, why would we need to, or want to? And yeah, Ive got a niceass house. The only places I've ever seen a flat rate pay scale breed any kind of unethical behavior is the type of place that is the subject of this thread....a lot of places like Pep Boys, Firestone, Goodyear, etc offer thier top techs something like $16 an hour (in this area) and the added benefit of a shitty schedule because they're open 7 days a week. Why would anyone with any skill or ability want to work there? Better yet, why would anyone ASSUME that a place like that attracts the top talent in the business? Note too that in these type places a "top tech" is a guy with maybe a year of experience, and maybe he actually bothered to take at least one ASE test. I would estimate I know over 100 technicians, and have seen all sides of the issue (I managed a Firestone for a while, so I've seen what their techs have to offer, generally speaking). I do not know ONE technician at a dealership or quality independent shop that would A) rip someone off, or B) demonstrate blatent incompetence on any job. I have seen guys making no money per hour, billed as a "top tech", that couldn't fix a sandwich, rob people blind. I will submit to you that the guys that drive home to a nice house in a $40,000 truck do so with a clear consicence and knowledge that he got where he is by being good at what he does. So yeah, you get what you pay for......but then again you don't. Most of the big national places charge about what a dealership does for labor.....they just choose to spend it on national marketing, and sending the brass on cruises. Eh, I dunno, seems like common sense to me...
OK, how about this one. I was hired to be the shop foreman for one of those places. The day I was to start I walk in and start talking to one of the guys and hear the boss tell this kid that there is a "special" oil change to do. I asked the kid what a "special" meant and he says that was a code they used to tell the mechanic that the guy was a prick. The "special" oil change consisted of washing off the filter and dabbing some oil around the drain plug, then sitting around for 45 min.!!! My box never came off the truck!! Place went belly up 3 mo. later. I felt really sorry for the young guys there that were taught that was OK.
for oil changes, a friend of mine whos actualy a car guy works at a mr oil change, if i bring him the filter and oil on a day that the shop isnt busy, free oil change ... cant beat that deal! the one time i had to take my car someplace for an oil change, i specificly asked them if they installed the plug dude got mad, but i was like "hey, its a fair question" the statistic i heard is that 25% of the oil change shops out there spend more on engines in a year then they do on oil filters one of the guys on the local car forum LOVES to have his video camera at his side. hes always up for some pep boys / stealership blackmail session i remember once some inspection place was trying to tell a kid "your car ont pass because you cv boot is ripped, causing your steering rack to leak" no im NOT exagerating that statement ! so onyx went over and shoved his camera in their face and asked for an explination "on the record" ...... car got a sticker on the spot .. lol
untill two weeks ago I worked with six former pep boys "machanics" and all but one couldn't find there own assholes with both hands and a mirror! These same five were also graduates of lincoln tach( local over priced tach school)
The three answers he posted are normally baseline; in other words, they're what you do if you have a good work ethic. They don't merit pay raises above and beyond COLA.
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