I have recieved a respons in my letter to just brakes on how they screwed me on doing my front bearing. (57 Cevy Belair) In their letter they state that to install new bearing you need to put in new races. Is this true? I don't think it is, nor do I think that did anything like that. The guy there made a BIG point to tell me that if the races were broken I was screwed. I hate these people.
normally you get the races with the new bearing, I have always been told the 2 have to be changed together cause of the wear that develops thru time, I dunno about tapered/roller bearing but with ball bearings thats what I was told and have always done
maybe 10 minutes if you can't lay your hand on a punch and have to cross the room to get one, they just get driven out and new ones seated in
New wheel bearings and races should ALWAYS be replaced at the same. If the old bearing damaged the race then it needs to be replaced.
YES don't try to save by only changing the bearing or the race, Someone may have got away with it. But if you pay for the work its stupid to take chance. And if you are doing it yourself, im to lazy to take the chance, and have to spend new money for parts and do it again.
Do they charge extra if the car has hub covering wheels that require removing the wheels before pulling the drums? Do thay charge less if the car doesn't have hubcaps to remove? Is this the same lube rate they charge for disc brake cars that require the wheel and caliper to be removed before removing a rotor? (Drum front brakes you can usually pull the dust cap and cotterpin and nut and pull the hub off with the wheel & tire still attached. it's extremely simple to do.) If you had just asked for new bearings in the first place instead of a wheel bearing pack and then had the replacement added to it would it have been the same break down? Would they replace bearings without greasing them if you objected to a split charge? Flat rates are usually fair, until the shop starts creatively overlapping them on a job that should just have one all inclusive price. I think they should have, and probably do have, a flat "replace bearings" flat rate and it should have applied intead of the combining of rates. Of course, the obvious answer is; NEXT TIME, DO IT YOURSELF!
Yeah... They are a bunch of crooks. I'd have done it my self, but I was on a time crunch (for the roundup) and just wanted to get it done ASAP.
they ****. I think they are tacking on **** charges anyway. If I was quoted a price for installing bearings I would figure that included all the "neccessary labor" involved. I think the races should be normally included in the price for bearing replacement.
What's the *****? Your bearings were bad so you had to have them and their respective races replaced. Labor ain't free, though I don't know why the inners were 3 bucks more to do. You also needed your bearings cleaned and packed. Again, labor ain't free. They have to be cleaned before they can be determined to be "bad". You're paying for two seperate processes, I see no "stacking" of charges. From the point of view of doing it myself, the charges do seem pretty high for the simplicity of the job. This is how those kind of places make money though. Maybe a small time shop would have pounded in the races free of charge, maybe not. Chris
Chris, For your info on the start of my BS... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=367049&fpart=&PHPSESSID=
Chris, the ***** is that they charged him to pack the bearings and to install them. This would be like me charging you to wash your car and another charge to rinse it off. You can't do one without the other. AND, just for the **** this guy said to Mike when we were in that shop, I wanted to take a **** on his window. He flat out told Mike that he was a hack. Mike asked why the price of brake hoses was $50 each or some ****, and the guy made up some ********. Then Mike said, "Well, that is something I could do in about 20 mins for 1/4 of that price, to which the guy said, "Yeah, you COULD, but I can SEE how good of a job YOU do." All of this **** was like that when Mike bought the car. In my opinion, at that point, if the car was still in one piece, we should have walked out of there and told him to stick it in his ***. That guy KNEW we caught him trying to **** us because he was SHAKING the whole time we were trying to interpret what his dumb *** was trying to explain to us. He kept using the same argument that didn't answer our questions, only changing it around. "WHY does your estimate say $230 when YOU supply the bearings, but the bill is for $235 when WE supply them?" "Listen, if you had a Corvette, and wanted to get new brakes, that isn't going to fall under the $99 deal that we'd charge a Chevy, because I don't stock the parts for it." We asked him again, same question as before. "Jesus Christ, let's say you came in in a Mercedes, that isn't going to fall under the same $99 deal that we'd charge a Chevy, because I don't stock parts for it." What we had to figure out was what he never told us up front, that if WE brought him the parts, which he was going to charge double for, he charges us an inflated labor charge. He never flat out said that, before or after we brought him the stuff. That $230 quote was if he stocked the bearings on his shelf. He conveniently didn't stock them, so he called back saying he could get the bearings for close to $100 each. Then he told Mike on the phone that if he could find them cheaper he was welcome to. So, what he DIDN'T say at that point was that he'd be charging more to put them in, or that if he HAD gotten them himself, it would have been $635! We expected about a $150 bill, the"in stock" cost of bearings subtracted. What he handed us was a bill for MORE than the quote, which had him supplying $100 worth of bearings. It was like an Abbot and Costello routine, this idiot was playing that he couldn't see our side of it. So from Mike's perspective, the guy's original quote was for parts and labor, if you subtract the parts, you would have the labor, the $150 +/-, because there isn't any more labor involved if MIKE supplies the parts. But in reality, Mike spent $160 in parts and $235 in labor, because this guy (conveniently) didn't explain their policy. At least that is how I remember it...
not defending the shop in question, but most shops make their money (to keep the doors open) on parts (up-mark) and labor. i've worked at shops that charge extra when you bring in your own parts, i've worked at shops that don't, to me what it comes down to is coupon or deal rates you need to look out for. it's a come-on to get you in the door. i don't believe in coupons or advertized prices, it cheapens you and the customer. i look at the car, give a estimate, if the customer doens't like the estimate then their welcome to take it elsewhere (with no discussion about how long it'll take then to do it). also in california your only liable (sp?) for the estimate price, they must update the estimate with your approval.
Yea, I read the first rant but I was referring to the info given this time around. Sounds like they didn't charge you twice for the same thing - they charged you once for packing the bearings and once to install the races (which they called installing the bearings). Two seperate processes. Either way, it ****s to be in a hurry and have to patronize such places in the first place. I hope it gets cleared up so all are satisfied. Chris
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