Complaints about car shops you went to...?

[tranquility]

Just a place to leave your rants, gripes or whatever weird/funny stories you wanna talk about the places you took your car for servicing.

I have a few

.the misc joyrides...I'll never get that, they have all these nice testers in the dealership, why take my car for that? So annoying

.scratches on the car and not owning up to it until I brought it up

.an indy tech thought he was doing me a favor and did that 'golf tee mod' to make my exhaust louder but didn't ask me (I didn't care either way but he should've asked first)

.I told another indy tech I wanted to ride along for a test drive to see what was wrong w my car, the guy just took off w/o me and then he reports to me afterwards he was doing 110kph on a city road?! what???

.a dealer screwed up my trunk doing a routine battery installation (trunk wouldn't close afterwards) and had the gall to tell me it was like that when I first brought it in LOL

Is it so hard to be a decent person while working in car servicing?

[Frostynorth]

Dealerships washing car when specifically told not to.

[tranquility]

Originally Posted by Frostynorth

Dealerships washing car when specifically told not to.

Yup, I used to be like that, but now I welcome the free carwash lol.

[Esteban]

I always check under the hood before I drive away. Found a wrench one time. I'm like "here, you forgot this." "Oh, thanks" was all I got. Unbelievable.

[floridaorange]

Nowadays the only mechanics left are the ones willing to do the work and there just insn't an abundance of them left evidently. We took our Volvo XC90 to the the shop recommended by the Volvo dealer here and the first time they changed our oil they put the gasket on filter wrong or it was a "faulty gasket" and oil came flooding out in our driveway and at my sons private school driveway that day.

Their way of making it right was fixing it. I think a free oil change next go around or maybe a half off would have been more appropriate.

So I called them about a loud screeching sound from under the hood recently, thought it was a belt, turns out the PCV diagram goes bad on these models all the time, so instead of bringing it to that same shop I fixed it myself for half the cost. That felt good.

[ASAP]

Honda dealer about 10 years ago... took my civic in for a service... they had a kid drive my manual tranny Civic... that somehow didn't know how to drive a manual car.

[Our03z4]

Took my brand new F250 to the dealer for its first oil change only for me to find they didn't fully tighten the oil filter. They also didn't put the cap back on the windshield washer fluid tank, this caused it to splash all over the engine bay. It reminded me why I do my own maintenance. Something so simple they couldn't get right.

[tranquility]

Originally Posted by Esteban

I always check under the hood before I drive away. Found a wrench one time. I'm like "here, you forgot this." "Oh, thanks" was all I got. Unbelievable.

Holy moly, that could've ended VERY badly.

Originally Posted by floridaorange

Nowadays the only mechanics left are the ones willing to do the work and there just insn't an abundance of them left evidently. We took our Volvo XC90 to the the shop recommended by the Volvo dealer here and the first time they changed our oil they put the gasket on filter and oil came flooding out in our driveway and at my sons private school driveway that day.

Their way of making it right was fixing it. I think a free oil change next go around or maybe a half off would have been more appropriate.

So I called them about a loud screeching sound from under the hood recently, thought it was a belt, turns out the PCV diagram goes bad on these models all the time, so instead of bringing it to that same shop I fixed it myself for half the cost. That felt good.

Yup, I know ppl in business are always thinking about $$$$ but there comes a time when just making it square is not good enough, the inconvenience of you coming back, time and a bit of expense wasted, stress, etc. A little *something* extra is good, heck, even a free jacket/bag, something!

[3.0L]

I have both my BMW and Benz serviced by the book. When both went out of warranty, I started using a very reputable independent servicer.

I had my Benz there about 5 months ago for its annual servicing. Their servicer advisor called me and said the spark plugs were past due for replacement. Fortunately, I remembered when that same servicer replaced the spark plugs and no, they were not due.

Had I not remembered, I would've paid for something my car didn't yet need. The advisor only looked at Car Facts, not their own records. To their credit, the shop did some serious back-peddling after I complained.

Even good servicers occasionally screw up, so it is up to the car owner to pay attention.

[Esteban]

Originally Posted by 3.0L

I have both my BMW and Benz serviced by the book. When both went out of warranty, I started using a very reputable independent servicer.

I had my Benz there about 5 months ago for its annual servicing. Their servicer advisor called me and said the spark plugs were past due for replacement. Fortunately, I remembered when that same servicer replaced the spark plugs and no, they were not due.

Had I not remembered, I would've paid for something my car didn't yet need. The advisor only looked at Car Facts, not their own records. To their credit, the shop did some serious back-peddling after I complained.

Even good servicers occasionally screw up, so it is up to the car owner to pay attention.

Yep. As I was just saying in another thread, anybody can make a mistake. Some are bigger than others. Good you were paying attention (like me above - that could've turned out bad).

[Samurai of 2day]

Not necessarily a car shop, but a motorcycle service center that I would recommend to anyone who would listen, not to give business if at all avoidable.

I believe I mentioned this issue on this forum in another thread, so here's the cliff notes.

I took a limited production, motorcycle (dream bike that I purchased used from a collector after three years of dreaming) to a dealer/service center in New Hyde Park, NY. I actually rode the bike to the shop for standard fluids and chain service at the start of the riding season. Before that, I've rode that bike up and down the I95 from NY to MD multiple times.

Bike was in the shop less than a half hour for service when I get a call basically saying the engine needs rebuilding.

Fast-forward, I was never able to ride the bike again. Sold it privately and had to get into something else, since those guys (I can only suppose) sabotaged my bike, in an attempt to either rebuild a damaged one they had (go figure out of only 500 units in the world, they happened to have another one on site sitting on blocks due to an accident) or in an attempt to sell me a new bike from their stock.

So frustrating.

[tranquility]

^Wow, that's disgusting.