Members Anderton Posted October 30, 2011 Members Share Posted October 30, 2011 http://www.wimp.com/lubeinvestigated At least it's nice to know not all news organizations have zero spine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted October 30, 2011 Members Share Posted October 30, 2011 I think this is pretty widespread in all national chains and the majority of local service shops as well. You can avoid the problem by changing your own oil, filters and transmission fluid. It's a good idea to find somebody you trust for other work, which takes a bit of time and testing (let 'em do a small job & see if they do it). In this 'business-friendly' political climate, there is zero chance that these criminals will ever be prosecuted... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sailorman Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Don't think for a minute that it's just Jiffy Lube; you should expect to be ripped off at just about any automotive service facility you visit; unless you are very well informed. I was the manager of a transmission repair shop in the late 70's. Part of a chain. My job was to go through a sales pitch; everything looked on the up and up in the beginning. But I'm mechanically inclined and pretty soon figured out that what the mechanics was telling me and the customer, was a bunch of bull. So you'd come in for a 'transmission tune up' (no such thing), be told 'your transmission is worn and damaged' (legally true) and get sold a 'rebuilt transmission'. That transmission came from a junkyard, had soft parts replaced, got a paint job, and was unlikely to be as good as what you had when you drove in. I am very proud of the fact that I was FIRED from my job, because I refused to sell a job to a woman. I knew that the car needed a clutch adjustment, at most a $20 fix. Boss told me to sell her a rebuild, which I refused to do. He called her up, sold the job, and painted the tranny while it was still in the car, using cardboard to prevent overspray. Then adjusted the clutch. Standard operating procedure. Dealers do it too. I had a Mazda RX7 in to the dealer for some A/C work and asked them to do a state inspection. They call and tell me I need brakes all around. I tell the guy, "well, that's kinda strange, since I replaced all the pads myself 2 weeks ago". He argued, but I told him to forget the service, and picked up my car; have never been back. Most recent; I bought a new Mercedes in 2006. Had all of the scheduled service done by their service dept while it was under warranty. Then took it to my excellent, and honest local mechanic. First time it's in for service, I pick it up and he shows me the 2 engine air filters, and cabin air filter; "you know, you have to change these once in awhile.!" Yep, the Mercedes dealer had charged me for the parts and labor 3 times, but never replaced them; and their service rates were through the roof. Whenever I need service and go somewhere new, I test them. If they say I need something, they'd better know how to explain it properly, or I'll be picking the car up and going elsewhere. If you're not mechanically knowledgeable, you're fair game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Actually dealers are the worst offenders. I had freon leak due to a bad compressor design in my Scion (it blew out the front seal of the compressor). My local Toyota dealer (in Cedar Rapids) gave me a $950 estimate to replace the condenser (not even the right part!). Another dealer (a Dodge dealer in Wisconsin, some years back) took my car out when it was in for repair and put 600 miles on it, returning it with the interior floor crusted with 2 inches of mud. Great fellas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 This is why I do all my own car maintenance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Wow. At the end of the video, they said that this was the third time since 2003 in which JiffyLube said it would clean up its act. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ggm1960 Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 That marking the filters looks like a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators MrKnobs Posted October 31, 2011 Moderators Share Posted October 31, 2011 That marking the filters looks like a good idea. I've always put a scratch on the old filter before getting my oil changed. I look at the oil on the dipstick after the change too, both to see if it's clean new oil and if they filled the crankcase to the proper level. I used to work at a service station where the manager was fond of selling old ladies a quart of oil they didn't need which he would then make a show of adding from an empty can. He used to tell us, "Guys, this station comes up short every month. We have to do something to close the gap or we'll all end up taking lie detector tests." None of us were ever tested (they tested only the worst shortfall stations every month and we never topped the list) but eventually our manager was caught and fired. It took them a while because the station safe had a drop slit and it took both the manager and the area supervisor to open the safe together. Turned out the manager was sucking money back out through the slit with a shop vac. Terry D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cooterbrown Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I used to be my own mechanic, but once it became a chore/cars became too difficult to work on/worrying about voiding a warranty, I found an independent mechanic who came highly recommended. He makes use of his online network to find and actually *show* me the best deals on parts, or even lets me order them myself from RockAuto.com. He charges me $25 to change my oil and filter, and every car he services gets entered into his computer, and he will email you reminders on when you have a service due. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members yanktar Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I worked for Singer briefly back in the 70's and just about every store manager and district manger was incompetent and a crook. A lady needed a pair of brushes on the motor of her machine, a couple of bucks worth of parts and 15 minutes labor, if you dawdle. The manager told me to call her and tell her she needed a new armiture. I told him "No, you call her. I won't lie like that!". All store managers were supposed to be trained in how to fix machines. There was only one who could actually do it, the rest all faked it...so they sent me to all the shops to do it for them--then held up my check! At the time Singer owned Frieden Computers and Singer-Link and they STILL tried to cheat me, a college kid, out of a paycheck. The corp would back-date paychecks so if you got your check on the 14th it was dated the 7th so it wouldn't look like they were illegaly holding back an extra week, which of course they were to kite that extra money. This is what corporations do when they think they can get away with it....and what Republicans defend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Wayne2 Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Even a lot of the well-meaning places, all they seem to know how to do is read the computer codes and replace parts. One place killed my car replacing the fuel pump so many times I ran out of money and patience to do anything else, finally had to just by a new (used) car. Another thing drives me nuts is they just Google the car model and anything remotely similar comes up to what your complaint is they want to replace that part, whether or not it makes any sense at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Wein Posted October 31, 2011 Share Posted October 31, 2011 I think this is a few years old....if not, it's a repeat of a story that swept through here a couple of years ago.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members techristian Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I try to do my own work as much as possible. I had bad experiences early on in my driving career with a foreign car, so this is my solution. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I think this is a few years old....if not, it's a repeat of a story that swept through here a couple of years ago.... It's been Snopes'd (not wrong - just old ~2006) http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/jiffylube.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lsits Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I think this is a few years old....if not, it's a repeat of a story that swept through here a couple of years ago.... I think Paul Moyer's been gone from channel 4 for at least three years. And Colleen has changed her hair color at least that many times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 eek... My Honda just received the full tuneup package from JIFFY LUBE last week... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted October 31, 2011 CMS Author Share Posted October 31, 2011 I still change oil in my car myself, but it's a chore to change the filter. I can see why a quickie shop would want to avoid it. And since you have to remove a panel under the car to get at it, it's hardly easier for me to check afterward that the filter was actually changed than to just change it myself. On the other hand, I haven't been able to find the spark plugs on my last two cars. I can see the cables and I know where the spark plugs should be, but I haven't taken off enough things to actually get to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Richard King Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I own a commercial building here in Vero Beach, Fl. The building has 12 spaces of 1150 square feet each. The economy here is HORRIBLE, so, in the past I have taken any renter who wanted a space. One renter for 3 years was a transmission shop. In March of this year he FINALLY moved out and moved from a minor space in my building to a building on US-1, a better spot for commecial space. The owner of this business was HORRIBLY crooked in his business. He was renting two spaces, giving him 2300 square feet. The wall between the units didn't exist, so he had a good, wide open space. The building had only one of the other units rented (told you the economy was horrible) when he moved in. I am now down to one unit rented, but, getting rid of a crook is worth it. I came there over 2 days one time and during all that time a car was up on a couple of blocks lifted high enough to run the drive portion of the engine and run up milage on the car. I didn't have a clue as to what he was doing, but another automotive renter at the time told me that he put the car up and ran the engine to destroy the so called "warranty" on the transmission. He ended up selling a newly "rebuilt" transmission for the one that was no longer under warranty. Another time a customer came in with a minor electrical problem. The fellow fixed it with minor soldering and parts and ended up charging for a new overall computer for nearly $900 (he didn't insert a new computer, just charged for it). He didn't tell me about this, but bragged to another automotive renter in the building at the time. He currently owes me $940 after I took him to small claims court for damages and theft. As I discovered one time he was breaking into units he wasn't renting and using them as though he was renting. The $940 was on top of the $2,000.00 security damage deposit that he paid to rent the place. Needless to say, I have received nothing from him to pay it off. My plan is to start spending about an hour or two passing out a copy of the court judgement to prospective customers at his shop and, hopefully scaring them away. The judgement was set on August 15 and I haven't heard a peep from him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I usually do my own oil changes. If I do get it done, I take it up to the cornerwhen theres no other customers and watch while its being done. A tip doesnt hurt either. The profit margins are slim on oil changes. Once you get to know the mechanics and they know you'll tip them they go the extra mile to make sure things are right. I was an auto mechanic as a teen and did my own vehicles all my life so I know just about nearly aspect of the work involved. Slipping a few lineslike you were in the business for years doing repairs like they did doesnt hurteither. They are more likely to do the job right if they know you arent afraidto get your hands dirty and check their work. Of course that doesnt stop a rookie from trying to sell you a new air filter that was just replaced. They are urged by the mgmt to sell that stuff too you, like a hamburger shop trying to get you togo for the oversized meal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Actually dealers are the worst offenders. I would think that it's safer to bring a car to a dealer when the car is under warranty, because if they cause a problem, they have to fix it. Say you buy a new car with a 3+ year warranty. If you brought the car in for oil changes and they didn't actually change the oil and filter then the engine developed a problem due to oil sludge, they'd have to overhaul the engine at their expense. It's when the warranty expires, then you need to watch out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 i wouldn't be surprised if, in this day and age, JIFFY LUBE didn't just quietly send someone out.....to "neutralize" that TV reporter... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sailorman Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 Problem is you'd have to prove that the work wasn't done, and that the sludge caused the problem. Difficult. As I mentioned in my experience with the Mercedes dealer, they'd not replaced the air filters. Wouldn't damage the engine, but I got about another 3 mpg after they'd been replaced, so performance was better. Proving they didn't change the filters would have been difficult; they'd have just said I was driving in a dusty environment or some other sort of garbage. Good friend of mine is a service manager for a dealership owned by the same guy who owns the Mercedes dealership. He said that the Benz service department had managed to bypass several procedures designed to keep such things from happening. One thing he found odd, was that there wasn't a separate listing of the parts; the service dept. 'buys' the parts from the parts dept. Could be that the 2 managers were working together to skim the parts. He also said the Mazda service tech and service writer were probably working together to charge for parts and service not performed, and pocketing the $$$$$. Someone at that Benz dealer stole about half of my CD's in my glove box. I didn't notice until I was swapping some of them for new ones. I had the stack of empty jewel boxes, but no CD's. I have pretty eclectic tastes, and it was obvious that the only CD's missing, were well known artists, all of the off the beaten track stuff were still there. The car has an alarm, and nothing else has ever been missing. My service mgr buddy was the one who asked if it had been in for service. That's when the bell rang. But again, good luck proving it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 i wouldn't be surprised if, in this day and age, JIFFY LUBE didn't just quietly send someone out.....to "neutralize" that TV reporter... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I worked for Singer briefly back in the 70's and just about every store manager and district manger was incompetent and a crook. A lady needed a pair of brushes on the motor of her machine, a couple of bucks worth of parts and 15 minutes labor, if you dawdle. The manager told me to call her and tell her she needed a new armiture. I told him "No, you call her. I won't lie like that!". All store managers were supposed to be trained in how to fix machines. There was only one who could actually do it, the rest all faked it...so they sent me to all the shops to do it for them--then held up my check! At the time Singer owned Frieden Computers and Singer-Link and they STILL tried to cheat me, a college kid, out of a paycheck. The corp would back-date paychecks so if you got your check on the 14th it was dated the 7th so it wouldn't look like they were illegaly holding back an extra week, which of course they were to kite that extra money. This is what corporations do when they think they can get away with it....and what Republicans defend. Yeah, I worked for Singer for about 3 1/2 years, and that was pretty typical. They (the consumer division) were scumbags, for the most part. They made some really good machines for a while, but that ended some time in the '60s. At that time, they decided to go 'Detroit Automotive' style, building machines with plastic gears that would die within several years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted October 31, 2011 Members Share Posted October 31, 2011 I would think that it's safer to bring a car to a dealer when the car is under warranty, because if they cause a problem, they have to fix it. Say you buy a new car with a 3+ year warranty. If you brought the car in for oil changes and they didn't actually change the oil and filter then the engine developed a problem due to oil sludge, they'd have to overhaul the engine at their expense. It's when the warranty expires, then you need to watch out. Good luck getting any results. Unless you give them MAJOR bad publicity (like a mention on Click & Clack) there is no motive for them to make you happy... In fact, it's in their interest to do as little work as possible while pocketing the money they get from the car maker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.