This is one subject I didn’t really want to get into to. But Im out of the business now and I can reveal to you what I witnessed. The reason for this for this article is to keep you, (the customer informed). I feel every business has these dirty little secrets but tend to keep them hush hush. These Tips will teach you to save money.
Lets talk about tune-ups first. Many many shops find it very difficult to replace all the spark plugs during a routine tune-up. I have found out during a tune-up, 1 0r 2 spark plugs were never ever replaced! Even cars with over 100,000 miles on the odometer! It always seems the easy plugs were only replaced. Boy that really got to me. As a service professional, this is just pure laziness. The electrodes were wore down to the bottom! I always informed the customer of my findings and to beware next time. How to prevent this is to ask to see all the sparkplugs after the tune up! And make sure they are the same brand. This will also teach you on how to save money when it comes time to upsell.
Oil Changes! Oil changes seem pretty simple. But in a fast pace shop a lot of the procedures are forgotten. Your suppose to get a complete Lube job with your oil change. I have seen oil change techs. Just gob up a lot of Lube on their fingers and touch the top of the lube zerks where it looks like they were lubed, where actually nothing was shot into the joints! So that is probly why a lot of front end components break before their time. Ask to watch them lube every zerk. But remember the newer cars don’t have any lube zerks from the factory.
And as I mentioned in an earlier Blog, One shop actually sold a good alternator back to the customer! He pulled it off the car, cleaned it up and repainted it. Then when the paint dried, it was installed back on the car and charged the customer over $400 for his own part! Check back in for more information. In the mean time check out my post on how to save money on your brakes.
