Auto repair shop stories

A customer went into an auto repair shop with a common complaint of the a/c not blowing cold air. They took their Chevy cavalier into a franchise type shop and asked for an estimate to repair the a/c.

The facility provided a whopper of an estimate for replacing almost every component in the a/c system. The shop wanted to replace the a/c compressor and almost all of the parts that attached to the compressor.

The customer got me involved before any repairs were approved. After making some notes on what the vehicle owner was told I called the auto repair shop.

The service adviser notified me that the compressor had internal damage and spread metal through the system. This was believable and I have seen this happen before. But I decided to ask a few questions before I recommended the owner approve the auto repairs.

I asked the service adviser what the pressure readings were on the high and low side. The adviser stated he would find out and call me back. Two hours latter he called back and notified me that the system was empty and the freon had leaked out. The red flag went up. When an a/c system is empty the compressor will not come on and testing is not possible.

The procedure would be to test charge the system and with the compressor running to properly diagnose the failure. I asked the auto repair shop how they determined the compressor was bad and spread metal through the system without having run the compressor. He said that his technician was familiar with this make and model vehicle and that compressor failures are common on this type of vehicle.

At this point I called the customer and recommended to move the vehicle. I informed the vehicle owner that this shop did no diagnosis and was planning on replacing all the parts and hoping the vehicle would be fixed. The customer agreed and moved the vehicle to an a/c specialty shop.

I decided to tell this story because the results are funny to me. The a/c place test charged the system and found a leaking evaporator. This was the one part that the first shop left out of the estimate. The first shop would have replaced all of those good parts and left the one bad part remaining.

Why did they leave the evaporator out of the estimate? The reason is that the evaporator is hard to replace. The first shop was only interested in doing the easier repairs and hoping it would fix the problem.

Now the car is fixed and the owner avoided replacing $1500.00 of un needed a/c components.

Auto repair shop story #2

The vehicle warranty was 3 years or 36,000 miles which ever came first. The customer had 36,125 miles on the vehicle, just over the warranty limit. I was surprised that the vehicle was having this problem because Toyota's are very well built.

I did some research and found out that the vehicle had brand new technology in the engine compartment. This vehicle had the first year for a new engine know as the vvti (variable valve timing).

I used All-Data online to research TSB’s (technical service bulletins). The very first bulletin was about engine oil leaks from the front timing cover.

I faxed over a copy of the TSB and the owner took her vehicle to the Toyota dealer instead of an auto repair shop. The dealership performed the repairs under warranty even though it was technically out of warranty by miles.

The customer was looking at her receipt and the repairs did not match the repairs that I sent her in the TSB. I had her fax me a copy of the receipt.

Would a dealership actually steal?

The service advisor’s honesty surprised me.

He stated that the timing cover seal was replaced with the updated part number but they had charged Toyota to replace the head gasket because the head gasket operation paid more labor from Toyota. So the answer is yes, this meant that the dealership was actually stealing from the Toyota factory.

When I went back to the customer and told her the story she asked me to drop it and not get the dealer in trouble because as far as she was concerned the car was fixed properly. The customer felt that looking out for the Toyota motors corporation was not her concern.

I agreed to drop it but I wanted to tell you the story. If the dealer cannot scam you they can still scam the factory. The dealerships lust for money knows no boundaries. They will sometimes practice this biting the hand that feeds them tactic.

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