Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Crooked Auto Mechanics and Shops....

I can only hope, ABC news going after crooked auto shops/mechanics again... get a kick out of their hidden cameras and reactions when confronted with their fraudulent bills.

Out of half a dozen stings they might come up with one half way honest shop!

Phil

I know my mechanic personally. Honest as the day is long. If I were to have to use someone I didn't know I would ask before hand to keep all the parts that they change. I do half of the wrenching myself but I use him for things I have no desire to do, like change a clutch in a front wheel drive.

A good mechanic is worth his weight in gold..

And that's about how they charge

True that. Some make an honest 125k/yr, or more.

I had an ad on craigslist asking for someone to do some motorcycle work , to come inspect it and give me a flat rate price on what it would take to restore it and then I'd pay him once the job is done.

A honda mechanic had them flag my post and he sent me an email saying to just pay the $80 an hour rate. He called me a scamming dumbass.

my response was I wasn't interested in paying him or anyone else to play with their smart phone while working on my bike at an hourly rate.

Saw an add for an auto mechanic shop in Missoula, Mt. a few years back

"We don't just work on cars, we fix them!"

Honesty in advertising?

I have been in the auto repair business for 46 years. Most everyone else I knew in the industry were like me, good at our trade and honest. We get a bad rap for those few bad apples.

-Ken

There's always that 10% in any business that screws it up for everybody else

with google, there really is no excuse to hear some bullshit line from a skilled tradesman about what you need to have done.

With 20 minutes of research, you should have a pretty good idea before you even make the call.

i've only had 2 bad experiences with auto mechanics. one was a shop full of dopers (i later found out) that really did not know what they were doing but charged top dollar anyway, and the other was Pep Boys. yep, Manny Moe and Jack in Bensalem PA tried to rip me off for hundreds of dollars of unneeded repairs. i was suspicious of all the stuff they found wrong and took it somewhere else and the other garage said they were either complete thieves or had written up the wrong car.

my current guy is as honest as the day is long and his son is working with him so i think i have a mechanic for the rest of my life for the stuff that i can't or won't do.

Aint that the truth. I had a front end bearing going on my rig. Took it in. They swore up and down it was the brakes. Wanted 1k+. Nope. Took it down the road, they looked at the brakes, said it was the brakes. Told them it was the bearing, they didn't agree. Took it down the road more. Looked at the brakes and bearings. Changed a bearing, all was fixed.

friend of mine blew out the overdrive in her car's transmission

Mechanic told her it would cost $1700. She thought he was scamming her because she was a widow.

I looked up a video on youtube of a guy replacing the overdrive in the exact same car she had and he talked about what a pain in the ass it was - had to disconnect motor mounts,lift the motory, drop the tranny, etc and then he said that the most common fix wasn't always going to get it done, often once you got in there you had to replace solenoids and other worn parts and you are probably better off just getting a rebuilt one.

In this example, youtube verified that the guy wasn't ripping her off.

The problem I run into down here more than outright crookedness is them doing shoddy work. I think it's a southern thing mostly, it's hard to find tradesmen who don't half-ass everything. I've managed to find a good honest mechanic & he's worth his weight in gold. The problem is he stays so busy it's hard to get your car in.

I went to a concealed carry class with my mechanic. We get along fine.

I've met my share of competent folks in the south, but I have never in my life met as many backstabbing, screw you over at any cost lowlifes as I have below I-10 on the gulf coast.

My apologies to any good folk that do happen to be stuck there but it was so bad I moved away from it. I've lived in Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and have spent extended periods of time in many other states and I just never ran into this sort of people anywhere but there.

The shops I have used use the pricing book to charge the going rate. Made no difference what time it actually took them.
I thought that was price fixing?

Believe you're right, Ed. And thanks for what you do.

A capable mechanic is a rather skilled fellow, and it's beyond me why people think they shouldn't be able to earn a good living. Afterall, if what's "broken" was so f'n cheap and easy to fix, people would've done it in their driveway themselves, so quit yer bitchin' so to speak. And of course there's a few bad apples - what else is new in the world? Don't patronize the crooks and move on.

Knowledge is power. If you know mechanics, but are too busy to do it yourself, you rarely get screwed. Some times they try to scam my wife, but when she brings me the quote, I show her just how wrong they are. Dealership was making us a new 'smark key' thingy and while they did that they did a 'free inspection' and told her we needed a new lower ball joint and a cv joint seal. I showed her what these parts were and how there was nothing wrong with em and we moved along. Odd that they didn't notice the brake shoes needed replacing though (but of course if they had, they'd have said we need new rotors and calipers too, even if they were fine).

Brother took his Semi in to a local shop last fall for an inspection. Other than a few small odds and ends they told him he needed a new steering box as the seal was leaking. He told them to hold on till he got there. When he went in he showed them the receipt for a new steering box they had put on 6 months before and it only had 500 miles on it since. They changed their tune quick and looked at it again to find out one of the hoses hadn't been tightened correctly when they did the install. Couple turns of the wrench vs $1300 box, which one makes more profit?