[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Yea, it would be nice to find that rip off mechanic and break his hands so he can't work on cars ever again. I wonder how many people he has ripped off.

Years ago (1970s) when my grandmother was still driving her 1961 Impala, literally back and forth to church, and the grocery store in her neighborhood she was told her tires needed to be replaced. She stopped at a tire shop and they saw a sucker coming. They sold her some high performance radials with a H speed rating. That old Impala had not been above 45 in many years.

I went with her to the tires shop and played the pissed off grandson, and it was not acting. They removed the high dollar radials and sold a set of cheap bias ply tires. She honestly only drove in her neighborhood at 25 MPH max most of the time.

From 1992-1995, I worked at a retail auto parts store. I heard about and/or discovered many, many instances of crooked mechanics in that time. There was at least one case where I'd like to have used violence to make it impossible for perpetrators to screw someone like that ever again.

I was working one morning and a lady came in with 3-4 very young girls in tow (probably all younger than 5 or 6). She looked like she was working hard and living hand to mouth with those young girls. She came up with 8 quarts of oil, and however the it came up, she said that she needed the oil to get to/from work that day (something like 5-10 miles each way) because she had a leak. I couldn't imagine any oil leak that would use 4 quarts of oil in 5-10 miles of driving.

She had an appt to take it to the Firestone shop that weekend. They had diagnosed an oil pan gasket as the problem and it was going to be $400. She was going there because she had a Firestone credit card.

I asked if it would be OK if I took a peek at her car before she left. I don't remember what her car was, but it was a low end, fwd, economy car. The oil filter was in the middle of the block facing the radiator and was plainly visible as soon as the hood was popped. The oil filter was unscrewed so much that I could put my fingers between the gasket and the block. It was a miracle that her car was still running at all. I screwed the filter back on and told her that her leak was fixed and that the Firestone folks had been trying to defraud her, and that she should either never go back, or at least, go to a different location.