How bad has someone tried to rip you off???!!!

Yes, it does...and they actually pulled one over on you!!! They probably gave the guy $50 for the truck on trade! LOL

 

Not enough info to be judging- a lot of late model stuff leaves my shop around 5-700 in parts , because oem or equivilant is that expensive,not trying to defend any one as theres a lot of dishonest and mis informed shops out there, but consider this: I get usualy an hour per axle for most brake jobs @ 55.00 an hour, now i get to be responsible for your family,your niebors,your ride, etc i also get to hear all about the price,and most importantly when you buy cheap shit, i get to do it all for free in 3 months to shut you up, or you mad and now i sold you junk, so now with most parts its oem or go down the sttreet, after you pay them 3 times then maybe youll want it done right. Now i know not every body isnt made out of money, so i always give the option to the customer as long as they dont hold me liable. You will always find chain store thatll sell you brakes for 19.00, a fuel pump for 30.00, an engine for 550.00, etc. The old saying is still true , you get what you pay for.i bet youll be cleaning brake dust of your rims the rest of your life, and those chineese rotors wont last 6 months in traffic. Again im not defending any one because i dont know all the facts and you may have been dealing with a rip off artist, just giving a subjective opinion as i deal with this on a regular basis with my customers, and ill be the first to say our shop is never slow and only advertises by word of mouth.

 

I replaced the front end brakes on my Ford F150 with the same parts from AutoZone. Drove it for 4 years without ONE problem. What you call cheap I call inexpensive. Brake pads and steel rotors aren't rocket science...

 

I don't wand brake pads that will last longer. Those cause more wear on the expensive part, the rotor. It takes about 15 minutes for me to change out the pads on a wheel. At $16 a whack I'll opt for the cheapies every time even if I have to put new ones on every thirty thousand miles.

 

My son bought a late model low mileage (OT) riceburner from our local Lincoln-Mercury dealer. About a week later the "check engine" light comes on. He takes it back because it's still under thier used car warranty. They look it over, can't figure it out and send him to another local shop that does all thier "furrin" cars. That shop says they don't know all of Mazda's secret trouble codes, so he'll HAVE to take it to a Mazda dealer in Indy. So he goes back to the original dealer and asks if they will pay for the fix; even offering to take a day off work to drive over... if THEY will pay for the repair. The OWNER of the dealership said absolutely not. They said they would only pay if done by them or the locally refered furrin specialist. So they just flat refused to honor their warranty. Too bad.

I ended up scanning the thing and then found ALL the codes (the other guys didn't have access to) on a website and replaced one of the EGR sensors. Bout $50.00. But what a pain in the ass.

 

my sister bought a new 4 door import, with 46 miles on the odometer the motor sizes up and leaves her stuck. AAA tows it back to the dealer and the next day she gets a call from the service dept telling her its going to cost 8K for a new motor.
get this, the dealer tried to blame my sister for not checking the oil in the car before driving off the lot.
it took a week but they gave her another car.

yes, we checked it for oil, HA!

 

fortunatly here in CA. we have the B.A.R. or the bureau of automotive repair. boy let me tell you thats one group of fuckers that you dont want on your bad side!! I know of two shops that charged customers for something they didn't do and those shops are no longer in buisness

 

You sir are an ass...that WILL come back to bite you one day and if you were in front of me right now, I would call you out to your face. You ARE one of the rip off artists that we are talking about here and I hope someone gets you ten times worse.

 

i've read every post on this topic . it must have made me paranoid because yesterday i went to pick up 2 new 13" tires for my girlfriends kids car . walked up to the counter and told the kid i needed 2 tires . he looked them up and told me 39.99 .....the radar went off , i was there last month and was quoted 34.99 . my blood pressure started rising and i told myself to calmly ask why the price difference ?? well calmly didnt happen , i didnt bite the kids head off , i just asked firmly . his wide eyed dont kick my ass response was " they were on sale last month "

i felt pretty stupid , but glad i didnt go completely berserk.

 

prices the brales on 4.8is X5, WOW.... What kind of SUV was this just curious?

 

last month a guy tried to convince me that my running driving nomad was only worth $8k and was bummed I didn't agree... I ended up getting 3x that a week later, glad I didn't listen.

 

Well, the last two time I tried to get a nailhead for my '55 sure qualify .
First one, I answer a ad for a 322 long block in Chicago, almost 400 miles away. Talk to the seller online and by phone, assures me it is a good engine but it needs to be rebuilt.
Priced right, 200 dollars. But I don't have a truck. Evil wheels are turning, I remember a friend is traveling back from North Dakota on a sheet metal buying trip. Driving a Dodge P/u with a goose neck trailer. I call him as he's going through Minmesota heading to Michigan's UP and ask him to go to Chicago (south side) front the money to me and pick it up. He agrees (good friend) and changes his trip immediately. Next morning he gets there, one of the seller's workers is at the warehouse (seller not around) gets the hi-lo and brings the engine out.

My friend calls me and asks me if I knew the heads were off the engine. I told him that I was not told this, and started giving him a list of what should be there. But first thing I told him of two specific places on the block to check for damage. Both areas showed signs of water jacket freeze up, both block and heads were cracked. They tried to smear grease over the areas so we would not see the damage.

The seller's worker got all pissy when my friend called me and we told him that we were not taking it. He said something about a promise to buy it, and I countered back over the phone that I didn't like getting screwed. Well, the seller never called me back despite a couple of calls by me, just a half assed apology by e-mail about a "misunderstanding" and it was a rebuildable block. In his opinion anyways.

The second time I had a '64 401 and a ST400 given to me in a car. The only catch was that I had to dispose of the car as it was a donor for my ex-bosses convertible.
So, while it was being parted out in the winter of 06-07 the scrap guy that came to the dealership took it without asking anyone. I found out a week after it was gone (at a different building) and called him about it. Well, too late, it was scrapped out and I was out a engine, transmission, finned brake drums and a complete factory A/C system for a '64 Electra. Told the prick thanks, and don't show your sorry ass up here again.

The thing that pissed me off most was that he stole from me, he knew it was mine as I told him I would GIVE the body to him when we were done, I wanted nothing back for it. He definitely knew I wanted the engine. And, to top it off, several times I held valuable scrap like 350 engines for him, called him and kept them inside the building until he showed up as the rogue scrappers were always nosing around looking for easy pickings. And to top that off, I hooked him up with a LARGE cleanup from a friend's shop and yard, and this friend did some engine work for him too at a cheap price. All gratis, I hook people up all the time and never ask or take a finder's fee. I just do it. What goes around comes around, my belief.

Karma bit him in the ass so to speak, he was on local TV with a investigative reporter at a building being stripped for scrap. He had papers later found out to be forged authorizing him to be in there. When the reporter found out they were forged, he contacted Detroit Police and they busted his crew on site. Good old Terry was contacted by phone and promised that he would come down to the precinct, it was all a mistake. He never showed up, leaving his crew to take the heat. Last I heard he was on the run as there were a few people looking for him and it was not for a interview.

Anyway, I ran into a friend a few months later and told him about what happened. He sold me the 455 and TH 400 at a good price for my '55. Karma works both ways.

 

Unethical mechanics take advantage of an ignorant public. It seems to be an unfortunate facet of human nature. What can we do to help better educate the general public? I am finding that there are quite a few people out there that are not clued-in enough to realize that they are in danger, or suspect that everyone is trying to rip them off, or both.

I had a potential customer pull in in his OT DD, to chat about a possible build. When he came to a stop in my lot, his truck made a two-tone noise that would likely simultaneously deafen a dog and a whale out-at-sea. I asked him how long it had been making that noise, he said "a couple of months. He said that "some jerk" tried to sell him on a brake job in the Spring.

This is what I found:
I fixed it for him, on the spot. I was not about to let him back out of the gate. I charged him only for the parts, with no markup. I told him that in order for me to take all of his money away from him for a Hot Rod, he would need to be alive. He agreed.

 

????

 

Wow, a custom slotted rotor.

 

How that remained in one piece in that condition is just short of a miracle...

 

It does say "Made in U.S.A." right next to the thickness specs!

 

I had a truck come in for a brake job when I was in Auto Shop class many years ago. The drivers side rotor looked exactly like this one, and the passenger side was not much better. My teacher had not seen any this bad before, but he made it a point to gather everyone around and show them what was driving down the road next to them everyday. It sure made an impression on me about the condition that I DO NOT my cars to be in.

Brian

 

finned for cooling ! HP ROTORS !

 

Holy shit.

 

I had worked in a place that had a sign outside, " $39 Brake Jobs". Up close it read, "We fix $39 Brake Jobs".

Bob

 

I personally would pass on doing any hot rod work for most people like this. My experience from dozens of people like this is that you can't educate them. If he doesn't know when his brakes are bad and is such a cheap ass not to fix them, I wouldn't ever want to work on his hot rod stuff. He won't take care of a hot rod any better than his daily driver. Then will talk about "some jerk" who didn't build the car right and that is why it broke, or leaks oil or squeaks or whatever the minor problem is. In the 7 years I have been in business for myself, I have learned that it is better to let some customers leave pissed that you won't work on their stuff rather than to have problems with them down the road.

 

easy there internet beef .. first off , highly doubt that .



And second off , my sister worked there. I didnt throw int he part on how bad they actually raped the old man on the truck with service repairs over the entire time he owned the truck , and how they sold him a pile of shit they bought from an auction for 500 dollars and sold it to him to the tune of 4000 .



you see my little sister did the title work for this company " ridings xamis ford here in central illinois" i knew what every vehicle was bought for and what it was sold for if i asked her.



You dont understand what these big dealerships do , they had HER forging titles when owners didnt sign somthing , actually threatened her with her job . they made it for a few years and then got shut down for a BUNCH of fradulant shit , title scams etc.



So you sir " and i use that term loosley" can fuck clean off.



Paybacks are a bitch.



and my location is right there by my name toughguy.

 

Sorry,you still don't get it.The fact that the dealership ripped folks off,falsified records and treated people like day old crap does not absolve you of any wrongdoing. You are bragging that you ripped them off,too. That might make you feel good, but it puts you both right into the same boat. It's real easy to judge from over here, but I, frankly, wouldn't want any dealings with either of you. You aren't Robin Hood, just another bandit.

 

If that photo of a rotor worn all the way off one side isn`t enough to show why there needs to be a state inspection system,I don`t know what is.....

Sure it is a PIA to get the cars all done every year,etc.but at least it gets some of the really scary stuff off the road.

 

Ok so now wait a minute .

Lets put this into perspective here . Im ripping the dealership off for giving them 600 bucks for a truck they priced at 1400 , i know for a fact only had somewhere int he neighborhood of 400 in it , and im a bandit .

Ever haggle at a car dealership before or do you just pay sticker.


Now ask yourself this , a fella goes out , finds a running driving "A" for sale , old timer doesnt know what its worth so he prices it at 1000 dollars . Arent you ripping him off if you buy it because he doesnt know what its worth and if you want to be honest you need to tell him its worth way more.

Betcha money you would have a "look at my score " post here on the hamb in nothing flat. Seen it happen a dozen times.

 

I have two - Years ago, former psycho girlfriend had a VW bug, and I had a shop that specialized in VWs. I rebuilt her car nose to toes over the couple of years it took me to figure out that she was (IS) nuts. We had pretty much called it quits, when she calls in tears that she couldn't keep her car on the road. Bring it over and I will fix it for you. A ball joint I had put in about a year earlier had been defective. Fix it up, but to busy to align it. I take it to a shop I had used for over 10 years, explain what I just did, and ask for just a basic alingment. New guy I hadn't seen before, "Were's Jack"? "Oh, he's off today" - cool. Get a call an hour later "man the front end under this car is junk, steering box (new), tie rod ends(year old), ball joints (see above), brakes (new disc upgrade), needs everything - gonna cost millions". I explain who I am, what I have done with the car, and please just align. Won't do it without other stuff. I'll be there to pick it up in ten minutes. Got in the car to go back to my shop, "holy shit" all over the place. I call and request a call from Jack in the morning - "Jack sold the shop to such and such last week" hmmmm. The cause of the new found wander? they loosened the bolts that hold the steering box to the beam, the four bolts that hold down the top of the stering box, the bolts that actually hold the beam to the front of the pan. Had she picked that car up instead of me, she would have been dead inside a week! Might have worked to my advantage though, cause she wouldn't still be calling every couple of weeks crying how she screwed her life up without me! This was fifteen years ago. Next I don't know if this falls under the rip off catagory or not, but the current sweet little bundle of psychosis (girlfriend) drives a '90 mercedes 300SL. I have a great working relationship with our local "old school" Mercedes dealer ship parts counter and always get not "long deal", but at least "good guy" price. The alternator packs it in last week, so I call up and get a price - 509.00 my deal, 895.00 retail, rebuilt!!!! DEAR GOD, says I, Is this made with parts from outer space? Long story short, went through my local wholesaler and got a rebuilt for 136.00. But man, that much with staight face?!?!