My daughter is going to school in St. Petersburg, Florida.  She had her oil
changed at Jiffy Lube and had a guy tell her that her "coolant is full but
it wasn't doing it's job."  He told her she had to have it changed and they
would be glad to do it for $45.00.  (It was brand new 1 yr ago).        

They guy also pressured her and suggested she was not too bright because she
was changing her oil every 5000 miles instead of 3000 miles.  

The same thing happened to my wife in Victory Lane a few years back. 
Apparantly it is a common ploy to use on women.

Ever been hustled for car repair/maintenance?

7 responses total.

  Fortunatly, no. My uncle was a great mechanic, and I used him exclusivly
when I had my Buick, although if I wanted to save labor costs I would have
to do the job myself, or help him, which taught me a lot about cars. 
  I almost got hosed at Speedy Mufflers in Port Huron, who wanted a day and
$95 for a complete exhaust system, but I had the presence of mind to take it
to Midas, who replaced only the Y pipe, and the muffler, and it only cost $55,
and it made the car run like new. 

  I think it's reprehensible to prey on those who have little or no mechanical
knowledge, but unless you can install microphones and cameras everywhere,
people are gonna get scammed. Best thing is to find a mechanic that does solid
work, check with the BBB, and ask for a list of his clients and call them and
ask them about his work. I can recommend John Jourdan on Broadway. He reminds
me of my Uncle Howard, fair and honest.

In one place I used to go to, I started getting a really strange vibe off the
manager, and decided that I *must* have been the target of some scam attempts.
It was the same vibe I got off sleazy concert promoters.  ;)

   a friend of mine actually fell for the line about having iron filings in
her transmission fluid and bought an entire new tranny from american
transmissions in ann arbor. and at least one mechanic at ron's garage is a
scam artist; he told another friend of mine that she needed a new half-shaft
on her *rwd* t-bird (but she got the opinion of a more honest mechanic before
any work was done).

I've mostly been pretty happy with the service I've gotten at Saturn of Ann
Arbor, but not at this point.  I took my car in for an oil change on
Wednesday.  They kept the car for an hour, and charged me for the oil change.
I thought it was a little strange that they hadn't put on the sticker saying
when it needed its next oil change, but assumed they had forgotten.  It turns
out that wasn't all they "forgot."  Friday night, as I was driving to Chicago,
I noticed on the temperature guage that the engine was running really hot (as
in, just below the edge of the red part of the guage, that it's usually only
about half way up to.  A couple of times I had to turn the heater all the way
up to keep it from going into the red part of the guage.  I started looking
for causes of this, and discovered that I was very low on coolant.  After
adding coolant, I started looking at other stuff that should have been done
along with the oil change, and the oil is dark enough that there's no way it
was changed two days before.

Anybody know a good mechanic for working on Saturns in the Ann Arbor area?
I don't think I want to trust the dealer with my car anymore.  I'm now
wondering how much other stuff they've charged me for over the last couple
of years that they haven't actually done.

I called the service manager at Saturn of Ann Arbor today and told him what
had happened.  He said there was no way they could have not done the oil
change, but said they could do it again for free if it would make me feel
better, so I brought it back in.  They really did change the oil this time,
and they inspected the cooling system and found that it's not leaking
(presumably meaning there's no way it could have lost a rather large amount
of coolant in two days) and did another minor repair for free.  He was very
appologetic, but still didn't admit that they had done anything wrong.  At
this point, I'm undecided about whether I'll be going back there again.

Perhaps you should check their work before you drive off.  I do that all the
time now after a few marginal experiences.

I prefer to watch mechanics at work, when I'm forced to use one, because
most of them don't know as much about my vehicle as they'd like to pretend. 
Unfortunately most places won't let you do this anymore.

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