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

Back in the day, I had an O/T, '91 Plymouth that had issues with ignition coils and fuel pump relays, only I didn't know what was wrong at the time. I took it into the dealership (first mistake) and they told me it was the brain and wanted over a grand to fix it. They then said that I couldn't take the car until I got the brakes fixed. I had just done them myself a week earlier and still had the receipt for the parts, and a witness that watched me do it. I went in there to see what they were talking about, and they had swapped out my rotors and pads with some trash. I showed them my receipt and told them if my car wasn't back together the way it came in they'd be hearing from my lawyer and the local news. I was 19 at the time, they figured they had a sucker. They put it all back together, and then wanted 24 bucks for doing an estimate. I got in the car and drove off and never heard from them. A few days later I had the oportunity to talk to a local mechanic whose shop was next door to the market I worked in. He said that those early 90's Dodge products had coil and relay issues and to let him check it out. 41 bucks later it was fixed, and he showed me how to fix it the next time it happened, which it did, several times.

 

i worked at a service station back many years ago, i had a guy who used to have me do his oil changes for him, he bought a new chrysler and was having trouble with one of the side windows leaking water, he took it back to the dealer a few times and then brought it to me for an oil change and was telling me about the leak, while the car was up i noticed holes in back seat floor, looked like nails had been driven down through, sure enough the dealer had done this to try and hide the water laying on the carpet, he took it back and they gave him a new car.


i fix all my own vehicles, always have, i did have a trans replaced in my 99 f250 diesel 4x4, that was $2500, thats the only thing i ever paid anyone else to do, i didnt think that was to bad as they installed a whole other rebuilt trans as mine had the caseing screwed.

 

Thats about right cause suddenly chevy can not leave the clip design on wiper blades alone. apparently the j hook on the wiper arm that has served for years is not good enough. only a couple manfactures that we carry at oreillys have the blades to fit.

 

My 2000 Expedition 5.4head gasket is seeping coolant into #4.
My local mechanic quoted $3800 to do the head gaskets or swap in a used engine-my choice. Or...$6000 to swap in a crate engine. Hell the car is barely worth $6000!
Told the heads are damn near impossible to get off a F150 while in the vehicle w/o lifting the body. Other option is to pull the engine.
I found a low mile/running 5.4 that I'm going to swap in myself-it's a ton of labor. Almost have the old engine ready to pull. Seems I need some sort of special "fuel rail disconnect" tool to release the fuel rails from the fuel lines at firewall?

 

I have a pickup and a good carhauler trailer. Over the last 5 years, I have used it to "rescue" friends several times from dealers. Each time, the dealer took the car apart to the extent that it couldn't be driven, and then gave an enormous estimate to fix it and a slightly smaller one to put it back together so it could be driven back out (so much for "free" estimates). My friends call me because they know I mess with cars. Each time, I showed up with the truck and trailer and never had to load up once.

One example of this was a guy that worked for me with a POS 91 Acclaim that blew the serpentine belt. When he took it in, the dealer wanted over $3000 to fix the air conditioner, which hadn't worked in years. When he first called me, I told him to tell them to put a shorter belt for a non-airconditioned car on it. They said it was impossible, and the A/C had to be fixed. When I showed up with the trailer and started unloading tie-downs, etc., the service manager came out and said that the mechanic had made a mistake and they could put a shorter belt on. The final total cost was under $200 (which still is considerably more than it would have cost him if he would have come to me first).

The dealer must have figured that it would be better to get the $180.00 for putting in the short belt than rather than getting nothing and having me remove the car. BTW, I've only had to do this at dealers, never at a "mom and pop" shop; probably the "luck of the draw", but you can draw your own inferences.

Why do I do this? Because a hate cheaters to try to take advamtage of ordinary honest people, and I can go weeks at a time not buying my own beer!

 

On the subject of brake pads, cheap pads are just that, cheap! The difference is in the product as the "Economy" pads will fade under hard braking, as in a panic stop and if you are a tailgater, this is BAD! The premium pads are made closer to factory and in many instances are better. You think the factory puts "Cheap" pads on thier cars when new? Hell no! That is insane to think! Often folks come in the parts store and say " I just want the cheap ones as it's my daughters car" HOLY SHIT! You know the way kids drive, you don't love them enough to put factory quality pads on? You cheap bastard! Not a scare tactic, but the truth! I put our best on everything we own as I love my family and myself and have come to the conclusion; It sucks to be stupid!

 

I was getting ready to do the front brakes on a 55 Ford Fairlane.I also had a buddy helping me out to find them. Thanks Louie. I knew the local auto parts guy would probably look at me and say "Special Order",and they did.
How much? They said,$60.00 and three weeks to get them.Dang.
I had the old brake shoes with me and asked him if he could cross reference them to a newer model and looked at me and said," to what?" So after flipping through parts pages we matched the part number to the rear brakes of a 73 Ford F100 rear brakes.
It was the same brakes!
How much? They said, $23.00 and we have them in stock.

 

should have closed the thread after this post...says it all.

anyway, had an alignment shop quote me $400 to replace a $75 idler arm. I did it myself in 15 minutes. Some people see a classic and the price goes up I guess.

 

This goes way back, but it is was a good f---ing to remember anyway.

We were driving between Amarillo, TX and OK City with our 59 Ranchero pulling the race car. The right front wheel bearing goes out. It is 11:00 p.m. at night and we are about 100 miles East of Amirillo. We find a gas station with a mechanic (remember those). Of course the mechanic is off duty, but the guy calls him. He brings us out a wheel bearing and race. We had pulled the wheel and bearing and have evrything clean and ready to install the new bearing. The guys says $200.00 for the bearing. My dad nearly shit and ask "is that installed?" They guy says no, he didn't bring any tools. Well bottom line is "what ya gonna do, he has you by the nads". We paid, installed the bearing and went on to OK city. But, while at the track, ask me if we checked and greased the other one while there?

Lesson learned

 

Hmmmmmmmm. Put what you will on your cars, but calling somebody 'a CHEAP BASTART" for being parctical? Shame on you, little boy. Your mommy is calling.

Having purchased the 'cheap' pads all of my life and drive like a maniac, testing my brakes as every stop as if every stop is a panic stop. Even my son says "I abuse the brakes", etc. I have never had a 'economy' brake pad 'fade' as you say. You sound like a service manager or a parts guy, , absent your obviously crude and Illegitimate manners, of cours..........

 

Took my wife's extremely O/T daily driver to the dealer for a transmission service (quite possibly the most non-owner friendly car I've ever seen, not even a trans dipstick). I tell them expressly to DROP THE PAN and check the magnet when they replace the filter. The car has been shifting funny so I figured change the fluid first then work the problem one step at a time. I get the car back the next day and it still shifts funny. Ok, next option is drop the valve body and have it rebuilt. I get under the car and find they didn't drop the pan. I call the dealership (while laying under the car) and ask them if they had done as I asked. I then told them them I was staring at the pan and there is no way they put dirt BACK on the bolt heads, nor dropped the pan without wiping if off. The service manager was speechless. I told him that 99% of their customers will never go back and check their work, but this customer did and I was not happy. They call me back a few hours later and explain that their tech didn't understand what a trans service was (B.S.) and that if I wanted to bring it back in they will drop the pan. I told them not to bother but when I'm done with the valve body swap I wanted them to check and top off the fluid for me (stupid German fluid is $26 a quart). They eagerly agreed and thanked me profusely for being patient.

I did rescue a lady friend of mine once from a shop. Turns out my dad knew the owner! My friend calls me in tears saying the car was too dangerous to drive because the rotors were grooved! The shop pulled the same old "we can't let you drive it out of here like this" crap. I called up and asked for the Shop Manager. I asked him if he knew the owner, which he said of course he did. I said that I knew him too, and his wife, and his kids, and had dinner with him last week. I then said if he didn't want the owner to know the crap he was pulling in the shop he would put my friend's car back on the ground and let her leave. A few stuttering words of apology and she was back on the road. That weekend I did the brakes on her car and found the rotors were barely wavy, much less "grooved".

 

This thread should be a wakeup call to all honest and sincere service managers and parts vendors. Those that, (on the other hand,) defend and rationalize the obvious blemish on their community are in-and-of-themselves the problem. It is not uncommon for me to receive an invoice with the "list" price discounted.

The rip-off artists sometimes omit that 'list price' lable and double it. So, even on this thread, there are people that defend that, knowing full well, that the 'premium' price is also an exaggeration, a rip-off. These are usually people in the business, giving their customer the business. They thrive on screwing their fellow man for their livelyhood. They are one more layer, adding to the long growing list, of the scum of the earth.

Telling the customer that (for example) 'economy' brake pads are unsafe is, either an outright lie, or spoken by someone that actually believes it because they are ignorant of the facts.

I don't see high prices as a ripoff if one is advised in advance of the shop rate.

 

Must be the the thin air..............Hee Haw!...............

 

What happened April 15th?





While I was freshman in high school I started started a conversation with the new kid in town. He seemed really cool, same interests, etc. He had a really cool project at home so I went to check it out. He needed an engine and I just so happened to have one for sale. I sold him a working long block 350 for $300. He gave me $50 and said he'd give me the rest later. I trusted him (Like a small town teenager). We became great friends after that, he took me to school every morning, we went hunting together, etc. I even loaned him an engine stand. After a couple of weeks I asked about the rest of the money..."Well what about all the gas I spent on taking you to school (I live a mile away) and that model car I gave you and those blizzards I bought you after school....?!?!?" I mentioned it to my dad and the motor was on the stand on my porch the next morning. It may have been a bitch move to tell my dad, but if you knew him you know how funny it was to hear him make this guy shit his pants!

Lesson learned, I've prevented a lot since then.

 

I wonder if he will also ask for a discount from his cardiologist while lying on his deathbed?

 

Oh great!

my superintendants truck is in the shop (GM) to have the electric window repaired on the passenger side..3 months ago the drivers side went out..over 400 bucks to fix it..they fall into the door, and dont come back up with the switch..they replace everything mechanical "supposedly"
sure im going to get fucked..but i dont have the time to mess with it. and it isnt MY truck..well technically it is..but its company...see im trying to fucking justify taking this dam thing to the dealer for this..
son of a bitch!

I would never.. i repeat never! take anything i own to a dealer or tire shop to have the brakes done..if i cant do it..than i should be shot and burried in the ground.

i just dont mess with power windows..guess i should learn

 

A good friend of mine is in tough times with her hours cut back and her husband a year out of work. Took her car into the dealer for the 30K service and got told she needed $750 in brake work. She & her husband don't know from cars so they paid it.

Didn't want to tell them they got screwed because their already stressed enough about money, but told them next time they need car stuff done I'd drive the 100miles up there and do it for gas, parts & dinner.


I quick halfway through my shift at a chain repair place a while back after they screwed a guy for $400 when all he had was a bad battery clamp. Got told by the manager "Yeah they cheat people here, but if you aren't doing it, why do you care."

 

This one is a real winner. I sold a 51 merc on gay-bay about 1.5 year ago for $42k to a real nice older retired man from Florida. He called me many times to talked to me about this car and had me send him alot of pics of areas he wanted. After weeks of talking and sending he all the imfo he asked for he decided he would come out and look at it before buying it. But for some reason he could never show up. He called and claimed he realy wants the car but just can not get here for some reason. I told him he could have the car inspected by a third party of his choice. I told him i would even pay him back up to $300.00 for the inspection if he buys the car. Wow the next day an inspector shows up and inspects the car. Two day's later he calls me and tells me will take it but is a little worried about paying for the car before it is picked up. He asked if he could pay me through pay-pal. I told him i would have to add there fees to the total and he agreed. He paid me asap tru pay-pay. Four day later a car transporter picked up the car and he called me and told me to just sighn the title and give it to the car transporter and the car left. Three week later i get a e-mail from pay-pal with the claime i took this mans money and never gave him the car. Pay-pal froze that money. I called pay-pal and explained to them what had happened and they had me send them all of my documents to prove the car was deliverd. Pay-pal told me not to worry after they saw my documents they will for sure get my money for me. Well this nice old retired old man from Florida turns out to be a very big car wheeler dealer on gay-bay and goes buy alot of different account names. Then I get a real bad phone call from pay-pal claiming he pays his pay-pal account by credit card and he has also claimed to his credit card co he never recived the car so they took there money back from pay-pal so they now can not help me. Well now it time to get a little rough. I just happen to have a few friends go by his house, work shop and used car lot. Of coarse he was not at any of them but i got a call from him that afternoon telling me it was all a miss understanding and will make it good asap. I sent my friends back to see him the next day to pick up the cash plus a little interest for there services. I did get my money but how many people has this nice old retired man from florida screwed ?

 

I was nusing my old work truck home one night. I just figured out that the alternator wasnt recharging my (new) battery. The truck cuts off right in front of a local gas station/repair shop, close enough that i basically coast on to the lot. I aske the owner if he could just charge the bat for me....he sais sure hooks up the bat charger tells me to crank it over. I tell him it just needs to charge for like 20 minutes....he sais crank it. So I do...after scratching his ass a few times and doing some BS checking in the engine compartment this Jackass tries to tell me ''the engine has no compression, and needs to be yanked and rebuilt. If I want to leave it he would give me a ride home."
My head was about to explode, I look at the guy and basically tell him I have been around for more than a month and he is full of Shit. He had this "oh crap" look on his face. Luckily the truck started and I left. I tell everyone in town who takes their car there for state inspection that story.

 

That's just sickening. People like that deserve the Singapore treatment.

 

Hey Kevin Lee, that old Ranchero took us about a zillion miles during it's time. Hauled our asses from South Texas to California, to Oklahoma to Lousyanny and more. That old 292 was one tired, but reliable, old puppy when we retired it. And,,we weren't "in" Ok yet, still in "nowehere, TX.

Now, this new "old" Ranchero I have, now that is a different matter all together. What a pain in the arse it's been....LOL

 

EXK,,,your friends? One of them wasn't called Guido was he?

 

When I was about 10 years old, we had a 13 year old Chevette, that dad bought for a case of beer just to get to and from work. It had been on the road for about a year, when the muffler went on it. Dad brought it in to local Midas Muffler, dropped it off in the morning and was to pick it up in the afternoon. When he went back to pick it up, the bill was 685$. The manager argued that along with the muffler, the extention pipe, the cat, and the Y pipe had to be replaced, dad never asked for extras, nor did the shop even call to confirm repair.
Dad walked outside to the car, got the ownerships from the glove box, walked back into the shop, signed the ownership, and told the manager "Looks like you bought yourself a 1979 Chevette!" We walked out and never heard anything about the car.

 

My DD had a long overdue recall repair on the gas fill pipe, so I finally took it to the dealer a couple of months ago. On the drive down, the exhaust system decided to disintegrate, and the tailpipe was doing a nice bobblehead impression when I arrived.

I figured as long as the car was there and up on the lift, I would at least ask how much it would be to do the exhaust, and if it wasn't too outrageous, I'd go for it. "We'll have to charge you a little for the tech's time to see what needs replacing" OK, whatever.

2 hours later I check back, "just finishing up the estimate now, about $1075, and we'll have to order the parts so we can't take care of that today." Um...no thanks.

I picked up the car later, and got charged $48 (1/2 hour labor) for the exhaust estimate. Ouch. Well, my fault for not asking how much "a little" was before I authorized it. While he was finishing the paperwork, the service counter guy mumbled something about "we even checked aftermarket, but we couldn't get the parts for cheaper than that" Uh huh.

I headed over to the national muffler chain place I had taken it to 3 years ago. Done in 1 hour, and charged me $143. The mufflers were warrantied, but even if that wasn't the case, it would have been about $250.

And the dealer probably wonders why I don't go there for service any more...

 

My wife took her car in once for some warranty work - the dealer came up with a total BS story about why we owed X number of dollars.

I told them straight up that I knew they were scamming me and no problem I would pay the bill as soon as someone there SIGNED THEIR NAME to the work on the bill.

I made that same offer to the mechanic, service writer and OWNER! No one would sign - & I never paid.

 

I had basically the same problem, the dealership tried to charge
me for repairs on a car that was no more than 6 weeks old.

 

For the record, there's three main compositions of break pads and the rotors on your car will be optimized for that type of pad. Organic are the softest, then semi-metallic is next and ceramic are the hardest. You can have difficulty stopping if you put organic pads on a rotor designed for ceramic pads because they won't grip the harder metal as well. You can also have ceramic pads wear rotors faster that weren't designed for them. As for economy versus premium within the categories, bullshit....they are pretty much the same. When I managed a parts store though, I would not sell organic pads to someone whose car took ceramic pads from the factory. I did not want to be responsible for someone taking a life because they were too much of a cheap fucker.

Worst rip-off I was involved in was a customer that called the last shop I worked at in exasperation to have us tow their Durango from the Dodge dealership. LONG story short, they took it to a "friend of the family" mechanic when their engine started acting funny. He told them it needed to be checked out then pulled the engine and rebuilt it and then stalled them while he drove it around for free. They caught him and took it back with the help of the cops and sent it to the dealership where it sat for a year because it was still running the same with the rebuild engine.

See the dealership told them that the timing chain had been installed incorrectly and was causing the problem and quoted them some astronomical figure in the several thousand range to repair it. That's when they called us. Now I was familiar with this particular drivability problem, pretty simple to change a cam sensor and stab in a used ECU...they were out the door for $600 and tax.

Any decent tech, ESPECIALLY one at a fucking dealer should have been more than familiar with this problem and fixed it quickly. They just wanted to screw this poor guy and his wife and I hear about them doing it constantly...nice to see their place get less and less busy as karma bites them in the ass though

 

Interesting story but not helpful to anyone offering a car on egay.

What was the guy's name, address and ebay IDs? Perhaps other sellers can take care to avoid a misunderstanding with him in the future.

BTW maybe one lesson here is don't just sign the title - fill it out with the buyer's name and address.

 

You guys should hear the stories I get from the our foreign PhD students here are UT. Its sicking. $100 to change headlights, $900 brake jobs, $3-$4-$500 emissions problems when they go out to get the car inspected. I have become the unofficial car inspector for some of these students. Some of these shops see dollar signs when these students walk in to their shops.