Thread: Is there anything you can do about an overpriced shop bill.

The only thing I pay a shop to do is an oil change. Can't be trusted with anything more complex imo. I always have the feeling everyone is trying to get money out of you purposely setting something to fail ect. dont most school have like other programs, I know we have a place called the JVS you could go to, learn trades and such autobody repair, car repair, hair, HVAC stuff, networking.

I didn't mean to offend you, I actually would prefer it being like a local guy that has his own shop over say a chain of places/dealerships because they would take pride in their work. Not saying those others don't, its just trust issues I have with others working on my car.

they are called vocational schools here. but you dont go there till 10 th grade or 11 th. you would spend the morning in HS doing all your general subjects, then the rest of the day you got bused to the other school for your trade skills for what ever your classes were.

at least when i went to HS we had auto, wood, metal, and mechanical drawing, all intro type course in 8 th grade,(my 8 th grade was in the HS) and you went to one shop for a quarter year, then to the next one.

once you were in 9 th grade you picked a shop for the year.

we had wood shop in middle school too, that started it 6 th grade. theres still some stuff my brother and i made floating around my mom house. 30 years later lol

like who in their right mind says hmmm, my car needs work, lets just drop it off at pep boys lol. id have to be in such a tight spot to ever let those guys work on my car.

my first and last trip to brake o roma for tires and a alignment went so well. the guy quoted me 600 in repairs for the leaks under my car, oil and coolant. water pump was going bad i knew it already and the pan leaks. yet he wanted to call it a rear main seal. when he never took the inspection cover off to even look up the back of the block lol f-ing hacks.

the icing on the cake was the alignment was pure crap too. only thing they did right was mount and balance the tires and bolt them back on the car.

good thing all this work was done at a discount due to what seemed like a good sale.


oh and just by looking at my lca's he said they were shot. lol they were 3,000 miles old. im like who the fvck you think your talking to here?

They cut all the cool stuff from our school and left art. I wish we had an auto class in hs. I would have loved that. Or metals. On another note my English teacher decided it would be cool to teach us how to jump a car. And messed up the terminals and fried his car. I also had to show him were the coolant was located prior to class. I like cars as a hobby but I don't think I could work in the field

I work at an independent shop and we've never ripped anyone off, and my boss does take pride in the work. He's got really good customers, and is always busy. Plus he's pretty fair in pricing and often won't charge for the little things. Like the guy down his street plows his parking lot for free when there's snow, and when his truck breaks or he needs something worked on he'll do it for free. And he'll drop the truck back off at his house and walk back (he lives down the street). We often pick people up and drop them off when they have to leave their car or come get it and don't have a ride. But this is an independant shop, operated by his family and me.

Yeah I know what you mean, I wouldn't trust them either. Before I got into cars my family took their cars to a friend who works on cars as a side job at his house. He had very fair pricing and was always honest. You gotta find someone like that, or a place like where I work. That's the best way to go, often they do a much better job too since they're not going by flat rate times trying to make the most amount of money in a day. Our brake jobs are so in depth it's kinda crazy lol.

the best shops seem to be the privately owned ones for sure.

the chain shops everyone makes a commission off every part they sell/touch. so they push lots of work on you.

the best was the car wash lube joint by me. my mother went for a oil change and free car wash, the guy calls her out to her car to show her a broken torque strut, tells her its cracked, sowed her the bushing. (this bushing looks brand new) its set up sorta like our rad side dog bone bushing, so the engine can move a little bit. they wanted 125.00 to install a new one. she thankfully declined and asked me to check it out.

guess what? theres nothing wrong with it, at all. just trying to scam a old lady.

it looks like this, the right side bushing has them gaps when brand new.

Haha that's good ^ The whole encounter should have been recorded.

I do side work out of my garage on the weekends and stuff and have people drive from up to 2 hours away to me for me to do work on their car. I had a girl today bring me her mom's car and I changed the ball joint in about an hour and she said she has an 01 durango that needs upper and lower ball joints and the shop quoted her $800 to do it. I told her I could do it for less than half that when it warms up out. So i'll have more work soonish.

why wouldnt your buddy just say no to the work? didnt they tell him a price before hand

There are ways to protect yourself. One is you ask for an estimate and make it clear there is no prior authorization to do any work until an estimate is provided. When they call you with the estimate is the time to question the cost and work a deal. Afterwards you can sometimes work em down if you think the bill is too high. You can certainly still ask for a detailed bill with labor breakdown and they'll give it by the book and then say it didn't really take as long so they'll lower the bill a little bit. Depending where you are, you have a right to the replaced parts as well. If you ask for them, that'll usually piss em off but get you a lil break too because they already threw the junk in the garbage, lol.

Anyways, buyer lament falls under the W.C. Fields rule... There's a sucker born every minute!