UPDATE: Walmart Refuses To Pay For Engine Damage Caused By Faulty Oil Change
Having just arrived in Paonia, Colorado for the summer, reader Ashlee thought she should get her oil changed. Not yet familiar with the area, she went with a name she recognized–Walmart. The oil change seemed to go fine so Ashlee and her friend decided to embark on a trip to Denver. Thirty minutes into the road trip, she heard a strange noise coming from the engine. She pulled over and intuitively checked the dipstick which revealed zero oil. Ashlee then looked underneath her car and saw oil covering much of the undercarriage. Eventually, she got the car to town where a mechanic discovered that the oil cap had been put on improperly, allowing the oil to escape. Later, she received an estimate from GMC of $5,875 to replace the engine. Ashlee’s letter, inside…
I needed an oil change. After all, I had driven across the country from Georgia to Colorado. Walmart seemed to be an obvious choice, be it that I was unfamiliar with the area, and a familiar name would just be easy and reliable–or so I thought.
Last Saturday I made a decision I would soon regret… I got my oil changed by “oil technicians” and Wally-World. Driving no more than a mile or two each day after that I noticed no problem and was relieved to have the oil changed and taken care of for the time being. Thursday afternoon Courtney and I were excited to be let out of work early, so we packed up the vehicle and hit the road toward Denver for the holiday weekend. No more than 30 minutes into the trip Courtney heard a strange noise and made me listen for it. It didn’t sound normal so we pulled over as soon as the road permitted. Having just gotten the oil changed it was my first thought to check the dipstick. Empty. Nothing. A glance under the car lent a horrifying view of a filthy bottom covered in leaking oil and a smoking drive-train closer to the rear.
My next thought was to get On-Star. Push the button. Nothing. Empty rings into oblivion, then the automated operator informs me that she is unable to connect to On-Star. A lone biker-man stopped, and confirmed what we had already gathered… which was that we were pretty much out of luck. Then another car stopped, leant us a few drops of oil that was left in a bottle he had in his trunk. They advised us to coast back down the mountain and try to get back to Paonia, where we had come from. We made it back, barely. Coasted into the only mechanic in town. Bob the mechanic then informed me that the oil cap was put back on improperly when the oil was changed, causing the o-ring seal to bust and the oil to simultaneously leak out, leaving the engine to run metal on metal and in turn ruin my engine. $4000 was his initial estimate, and that was just a courtesy as he is not actually equipped to replace entire ENGINES!
Keep in mind that I own a 2006 Saturn Vue, which only has 54,000 on it. No prior mechanical problems to speak of, until Walmart’s “technicians” got their hands on it. Currently trying to work with Walmart and their insurance company to see if they will pay for the replacement of my engine, parts & labor, the cost a rental car (since the GMC dealership told me it would take about 2 weeks for repair)… and I want quarts of oil for LIFE! Final estimate from GMC was $5,875!
BOOOOOOO Walmart for sure this time!! Don’t get your oil changed there, go to a REAL mechanic! Just do not shop there, period.
We would like to see Walmart take responsibility for the botched job. Our thinking is that if they can’t even do the retail store thing right, what chance to they have on a car with hundreds of moving parts? You would have actually been better off if Walmart didn’t change your oil at all and just lied about it.
Wal-mart Automotive Center = DEATH & DESTRUCTION! [Ashlee's Blog]
More From Consumerist
-
Walmart Still Ignoring Customer Whose Engine Was Ruined In Botched Oil Change
-
Walmart Oil Change Turns Into $3,000 Disaster And I Can't Even Get Store To Call Me Back
-
Walmart Won’t Change The Oil In My Fiat Because It’s Not “In The Book”
-
Ambitious Thief Walks Out Of Costco With 24 Bottles Of Motor Oil Wrapped Around His Body
-
Staffers & Experts Explain Why Walmart Can’t (And Maybe Shouldn’t) Change The Oil In Your Fiat
@JustThatGuy3: I didn’t say “rebuild your own engine” There’s a difference between being able to do basic maintenance and being a wizard. I would say, anyone that can’t take a computer out of a box, install software, and put it all together and make it work shouldn’t own one either.
And if you can’t balance a checkbook and deal with the intricacies of a bank account, maybe you should move somewhere where commerce is based on the barter system.
My larger point is, some people are lazy, and our society supports that laziness. Then people complain when some stranger they entrusted to perform a menial task for them that they should have been able to do themselves, screws up.
This same thing happened to my brother-in-law. Best thing to do is to call:
1. The oil changer
2. Your car insurance
3. The car manufacturer
4. A lawyer
… and in that order. In his case, the manufacturer paid for it, and then went after Jiffy Lube.
@mechimike:
Weak argument after weak argument. If someone is willing to pay for a service – say, an oil change or someone to set up their computer and configure it for them – that’s their business.
Whether it’s because they don’t know how or simply don’t feel like doing it is irrelevant. But whomever they paid to provide those services is on the hook to do it correctly.
@Wormfather is Wormfather: I have money too. And my dad, well, he’s an accoutant, so he could tell you to the penny how much money he has.
A good portion of the time, whenever I’ve paid someone to do something for me, they’ve screwed it up. Its not worth my time, my frustration, or my MONEY to pay some jackleg to do something for me which I then have to re-do.
I clean my own house, I fix my own car, and a mix my own drinks. Maker’s Mark Manhattan, perfect, on the rocks. Because I have to deal with lazy, incompetant, ignorant bastards all day long.
@JustThatGuy3:
Thats a wise analogy there,”Dr. Einstein”.
If you are too lazy or stupid to change your own engine oil,then don’t expect a discount chain store to hire anyone any smarter than you to do it.
The fact is, this is a basic part of auto ownership that you should know. I don’t trust anyone but myself to care for my car as much as I do. They didn’t have to pay for it-I did. thats why I’m not going to let some slacker 19 year old that just finished a fatty do such important work when they have next to no accountability.BTW- some of the most religious oil changers that I know are women. Once they learn what to do,they don’t let it slide when it needs doing.They will enjoy their car longer for less money.
@CCS: Been there. Actually, I once replaced an oil pump on the street. A driveshaft, too. And, if you look, most larger cities have D-I_Y garages where you can pay a few bucks for some bay time and do whatever you want. Lots of them have tools you can rent, too.
I’m perpetually amazed at people who pay people to do everything for them. There’s a certian pride to be had in D-I-Y. America used to be a D-I-Y nation. Now we have a service economy. Well, (in the words of Alan Greenspan), at least that’s _some_ economy. (Better than nothing!)
@Stormslanding: 4 cylinders are notorious for burning oil? Really? Tell that to my ’94 Civic with 258,000 miles that doesn’t use a drop between changes.
@wmschoenhofer: Beat the shit out of you? WTF? What does he think he is, a mobster?
*sigh* This is apparently what happens when a Jalopnik libertarian decides to check out a link on Consumerist socialist.
@VicMatson: The O-Ring is on the oil filter, she’s not a mechanic and probably didn’t understand, but yes if you put the oil filter on wrong it will leak oil, and at quit a fast rate. This is why I do my own oil changes. Though it’s a pain in the ass on modern cars, because some asshat engineers don’t put shit in a logical place.
@mechimike: A D-I-Y nation founded on the backs of slaves and indentured servants?
@Erwos: I concur.
On #4 the lawyer, if I recall my business law classes correctly, there is a contract between the establishment and the customer that does occur a once a customer enters an establishment for goods or services. For instance if one enters a restaurant one would expect the food not to make you sick. However in the case of an oil change there is the paper that one signs. What does the paperwork say? Is it a waiver of liability for Wal-mart? If you sue can you build a case that a judge would believe and that would produce enough of a settlement for an attorney to take up the case? I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time.
@mechimike: I work upwords of 70 hours a week, so does my fiancee, we really dont have time to do any of that stuff and we make good money so it makes sense to have someone else do it (hell the reason we dont own a house is because, get this, we havnt had time to look!) Then again I probably spend 20 minutes a day trolling around on consumerist…anyway…
I take my car to my dealership they change the oil and give me a loaner or take me to the trainstation. I go to my bar and they make my drink. Restaurants…well they always seem to mess stuff up. My house is clean on Friday when I get home ($50 is a drop in the bucket for a clean house). If my fiancee and I had to do all those things ourselves we’d be miserable people who never spend any quality time together as we’d rather snuggle up on the couch or go to a movie on Friday night than wash dishes, laundry and paper, rock sicsors over who cleans the bathroom.
@verucalise: Had you ever had a mechanic change the timing chain on that car before? I believe the normal interval to have a timing chain changed is 60,000-80,000 miles.
If it wasn’t changed, well consider yourself glad it lasted that long.
To those who are saying there is no O-ring, I’m pretty sure the 2006 model VUEs have a drop in oil filter. The oil filter housing cap does in fact have an O-ring that has to be replaced from time to time, and perhaps that’s what they’re talking about.
@mechimike: Bitter much?
@rhmmvi: You beat me to it. Huzzah.
@mechimike: sometimes changing your own oil isn’t the best idea. i try to do most of my work on my own, but i don’t necessarily recommend it:
(1) if you don’t know what you’re doing, you DEFINITELY should not change your own oil. sure, it’s pretty easy, but if gomer pyle can forget to replace the filler bolt or install the wrong filter – so can you.
(2) changing your own oil may sound like a good idea, but i know more than one person who has been denied in-warranty repair (esp. for transaxle work) b/c they couldn’t show proof of “manufacturer recommended maintenance”. most DIY people will simply tell you to maintain receipts for the oil/filter, but that didn’t fly with one friend’s land rover & another friend’s jeep. YMMV – keep that in mind.
(3) if you’re not going to dispose of your oil properly, please don’t do your own oil change. & no, “pouring it down the storm drain” does not qualify as proper disposal.
if you can find a reliable mechanic that you trust to change your oil on the cheap, your time & efforts may be better spent elsewhere.
@CharlieInSeattle: Like placing the power steering resivor behind and below the alternator… A place that’s nearly impossible to reach, and if you do try to reach it, the engine better be cool. It’s a beautiful piece of GM engineering.
@theblackdog: From what I understand a timing CHAIN *should* last the life of the engine, or at the very minimum, 150,000 miles. But, it SHOULD be inspected at regular intervals, along with the sprockets to make sure no teeth are missing/damaged. Break the timing chain/belt in an interference-type engine, and well, it’s time to shop for a new engine. Timing BELTS, on the other hand, need to be changed somewhere around 60k-100k miles. Depends on the car.
they actually did that to my mother’s ’03 saturn vue once… or, at least, they screwed up the oil change pretty badly. it also had to go in the shop. usually they’ll pay up, you just have to complain loud enough.
@wmschoenhofer: There is no magnet on the oil filter. The magnetic ring is on the transmission filter to pick up metal fragments, but does not hold the filter on. Spin-on oil filters have O-rings mounted in the base. Drop-in cartridges use O-rings in the cover.
@JustThatGuy3: Your analogies are flawed – they’re saying that someone shouldn’t own a car unless they’re an automotive engineer. Mechimike’s point is a little over the top, but so are your analogies.
You don’t need to change your own oil, just understand how it’s done, so you can check for dumb mistakes. If someone is too stupid to understand an oil change, how the hell did they pass the license test?
@mechimike: “My larger point is, some people are lazy, and our society supports that laziness.” Some people have too much demand on their time, not that they are lazy. Some don’t like working a 60 hour week to come home and spend the weekend housecleaning, working on the cars, and mowing the lawn. Either way, don’t knock it – hiring others to do work for you helps the economy and creates jobs. It’s just that when they screw up the menial tasks, they should own up and make it right.
For all anyone knows, this woman spins her own silk, sews her own clothes, churns her own butter, files her own taxes, and installed the toilet in her upstairs bathroom.
But by all means, let’s just assumes she pays people to do EVERYTHING for her, making her lazy, unmotivated and completely un-self-sufficient like every other damn American nowadays…. just so we can dismiss her claim that Walmart (allegedly) f*ed up her car.
Wow. Talk about blaming the consumer…
@suzapalooza: I can answer “B” — that would be my wife. She drove around with the parking brake on and burned up the brake. I asked her why she did that, when the brake warning light was on. Her response was, “I don’t look at those lights.”
After showing her the bill for the brake repair, I think I’ve convinced her that she needs to pay attention to warning lights when they come on…
@Ragman: Valid point. However, I think the mentality of “I need to work 60-80 hours/week to afford my lifestyle” just means you have an over-ambitious lifestyle.
But, I guess I shouldn’t judge. Right? I mean, because I chose to work my 40 and go home, to do “menial” tasks I choose not to pay others to do, and drive a POS beater car, doesn’t mean I should look down my nose at someone who works twice as much as I do to afford the Mercedes and a servant for every chore.
Still, I can’t help but think we’d be better off as a whole if more people tried to be independent.
My Saturn VUE, only 45,000 miles on it, twice something happened with a “defective or cracked 0-ring” and a leaky oil tank. Both times, each a year apart, all the oil leaked out pretty quickly, over a day or so, and I was unware of it until my engine started knocking loudly.
The mechanic said it’s not the first time he’d seen the problem, and the cars are all quite new. It still to this day burns a ton of oil between changes, and no one can tell if it’s really burning it, or covertly leaking it somehow very slowly.
This is the sort of thing where Walmart is clearly liable. They have, or should have insurance for this sort of thing. If they are being difficult, its worth getting a lawyer to send them a letter, it’ll probably clear things right up.
@Ragman:
i dunno where you live, but where i live, it’s questionable whether you actually have to learn to drive to obtain a license. & just the other day i had to keep a straight face watching soccer mom try to figure out the complex task of fueling up her escalade (she honestly had no clue what to do). one individual i know ran their car for ~90,000 miles before the engine seized up b/c they never even popped the hood!!! 3 years without a single service – i’m surprised they got as far as they did.
my point is, there’s a lot of uneducated people out there that simply refuse to learn even the most menial things – an oil change is not even near the top of that list.
@Snarkysnake: Lazy or stupid has nothing to do with it. I’m an apartment dweller, and it’s a condition of my lease that I can’t work on my car in their parking lot. I don’t know about the person who went to Wal-Mart in the first place, but it’s quite possible that she’s in the same or a similar situation.
Also, the “coding” analogy is rather apt. If I said that you need to know how to write a script file, or a short binary in C++, in order to use a computer, you’d laugh me off, and rightfully so. That’s not a skill that the average user needs. Helpful, sure, but not necessary.
Help me out here; she paid for a service, Wal-Mart bolloxed it up, and as a result her car is ruined. How the hell is this her fault?
@NotATool: My fiancee just did that, caused all sorts of damage to the car, $1600…then when I got done, she had the nerve to ask to go to the emergency room. J/K, I was actually very understanding and told her to be more carful.
@mac-phisto: When I was a kid my neighbor put oil down the storm drain, both our lawns turned yellow.
My local mechanic had a very amusing but quasi-amnesiac guy working there. Before he was moved away from cars, he forgot to replace the oil plug during an oil change. 30 mins later, similar results.
> Got a brand new engine removed and replaced in a bit over a week, no hassles, plenty of apologies and a rental.
>> Realize the LW is an out of towner, but demand Wal-Mart make the car whole again quickly, then find a decent local mechanic (Car Talk’s message boards have a list of listener-recommended mechanics spanning the country).
>>> Avoid Wal-Mart. They’re incompetent and evil.
This happened to me once at a jiffy lube. Our poor little 1990 S-10 died about 1.5 miles from the oil change place. The shop said it was due to too much oil being filled, which caused damage that pretty much ruined the engine. After much insisting on our part, corporate sent out an insurance adjuster to look at our car and paperwork, and they eventually cut me a check for $2000 to repair the engine.
Jiffy lube’s insurance ended up paying the bill.
All i’m going to say is, this is the company that hires cashiers that don’t understand why you don’t put mothballs in with food products, and why bread or eggs does not go on the BOTTOM of a grocery bag.
If they hire such sterling individuals to bag your stuff, just imagine who they would have to work on your car.
Nope, I would not ever, EVER get my car serviced by wal mart even if they were the last mechanic on earth, within eyesight of me as I was broken down in the worst weather absolutely possible. Would not do it.
@trogam (and all home oil-swappers): Pleeeease tell us that you take your spent oil to a mechanic for recycling rather than dumping it down the drain (they’ll take it, often for free, sometimes for a nominal recycling fee).
Totally agree that oil changes are the easiest self-repair to do (hey, though, remember to replace the filter too, and while you’re at it, the air filter and check the fluids as well).
@Wormfather is Wormfather: To be honest, I did that a couple times too. Until a shocked and chagrinned neighbor caught me and – nicely, considering the ecological Gotterdumarung I was committing on the Bay Area fishies I had done – explained what a lousy thing I was doing, then pointed me to the recycling-at-mechanics trick.
The same person called her bf down and he showed me pointers on basic tune-ups, too. And how to jack a car properly. A really nice couple that seduced me into seeing The Big Picture in an incredibly helpful, constructive way. Yay, kewl neighbors!!
Never happened to me in Wal-Mart California but happened the first time I had the oil changed in Reno, NV. Within a few miles I heard an odd sound while driving (I think the oil cap which had never been put on dropped on the ground from the engine). I didn’t realized what happened but the next day I saw a big oil spot on the ground and it was easy to figure out from there. Fortunately most of the oil was still in the engine. I asked from Wal-Mart and got with no hassle:
1. Rag, brush, and chemical to clean driveway.
2. 2 quarts of oil to make sure I got to the car dealer without problems
3. A new cap.
4. A complete redo of the oil change by Toyota to ensure no obvious problems were generated. They did find that the oil pan bolt was also loose.
While I can say that Wal-Mart made good on the error the hassle was not worth it and I will not use the store in Reno again. In any case I would never used them on a fairly new vehicle, mine was 10 years old.
I had some engine work done on a motorcycle and they forgot to put the oil back in. Fortunately I discovered this shortly after picking it up. Brutal.
@Trai_Dep:
You don’t take used oil to a mechanic, you take it back to the automotive store where you bought it as they are required by law to take the used back for recycling.
@theblackdog:
A timing belt needs replaced a timing chain does not. A timing chain is a lifrtime part like a crankshaft or piston, it lasts the lifetime of the engine.
Walmart? Oil change? Huh? Sorry to hear this, but she could have at least looked for a Jiffy lube or something.
So much for the Conusmerist commentors manifesto.. particularly the don’t bash the OP section.
I don’t change my own oil, that doesn’t make me a bad person. I prioritize my time, and 15 minutes (I assure you, it will take me longer than 15 minutes, and it takes you longer than that too) spent changing my oil to save $10 isn’t worth it. There are much more valuable things I can do with my time, and energy.
The point of the story is Wal-Mart screwed up. Big time. What are they going to do to fix it? The point is not that OP should know how to change her own oil. (maybe she does and also prioritizes her time, and if she doesn’t it shouldn’t matter in re Wal-Mart’s screw up) The point is not that no person EVER should spend any money at Wal-Mart. It’s been said here, repeatedly. We get it. You are enlightened. Everyone else is a peasant. Nobody gives a shit.
@Wormfather is Wormfather:
Hello, exactly.
While this bothers me, I have to wonder, if the cap was leaking oil on to the valve cover…it had to drip somewhere, and it likely eventually dripped on to the exhaust manifold.
Maybe homegirl is hard-of-smelling, but buring oil, even in very small amounts, is a difficult scent to overlook.
I had a oil cap gasket on my 20 year old Mercedes start leaking what appeared to be about two drops per mile, and when I parked it, there was obvious smoke coming from the right side of the hood. In my case, just flipping the gasket over solved the problem for probably another 10 years, but still, didn’t she notice SOMETHING in the days beforehand?
Although she was driving only a mile or two, so maybe things didn’t get hot enough….
My stepson had Pep Boys hose a timing belt job on his ’95 Neon. Bent a valve on the way home…they redid the entire thing, valves and all, no questions asked.
I still am amazed they didn’t notice something was amiss when they backed it out of the repair bay, but it IS Pep Boys…
@mechimike:
What is a libertarian? Someone who believes individual liberty is of the utmost importance?
Is the exception to that the liberty to choose to use the services provided by others for a fee? Apparently you are all for individual liberty so long as that individual liberty only includes doing everything for yourself. Which doesn’t sound particularly libertarian, sounds more like you are making their decisions for them.
What, there was no JiffyLube nearby?
This is like people who complain about the Scampi at a Friendly’s.
@StevieQ:
No. It’s like complaining about the Scampi at Friendlys if the Scampi at Friendly’s puts you in the hospital for 4 days. Sure, the Scampi at Friendlys tastes like shit, and you are silly to complain if it doesn’t taste like what you could get at Phillips. But, you still have a right to complain if it almost kills you.
@harvey_birdman_attorney_at_law: Not sure what comment your refering to, but if I said it…rock on!
@enine: Really? I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks!
What if you buy it at a non-automotive store? I can’t see retail places doing anything but snickering if I show up w/ 4 qts of used motor oil. Great tip for those that get it from a auto parts store, though. Awesome!
My Dad taught me how to change the oil in a vehicle before I was old enough to drive, and I’m doing the same with my boys. I am the only one who changes oil in my vehicles and I check them regularly.
Not to fault the victim though, if Walmart did the oil change and the victim never touched anything under the hood (as many people are today), then it is Wal-marts responsibility, pure and simple.
If the victim wants to keep this from happening in the future, your best bet is to change your own oil.