A good mechanic is priceless. I had a "good" small town mechanic say that the lower ball joints needed replacing on my truck at a cost of over $600. I then took it to another mechanic who in 10 minutes had looked at it, found the loose heat shield, fixed it, and given my keys back to me at no cost.

Congrats OP, persistence and confidence have won the day.

However, I never recommend instigating a confrontation. Doing your appropriate due diligence in reporting this location through the appropriate channels will provide far more satisfying results long term.

an honest mechanic is worth his weight in gold

For anyone in the Pearland Texas area (south of Houston) Morrow Transmission fixed a problem like this on a car my wife had a few years ago for FREE. Needless to say, I've sent them more business and go out of my way to recommend them.

Car repair is a tricky thing, especially if you don't know anything about cars. You definitely need a guy. If you don't know which place is trustworthy, ask around work. Everyone has 'a guy.' Someone who does good work at fair prices.

Had something like this happen...not quite as newsworthy because it was a minor mechanic shop trying to rip us off and not any sort of company.

A scratching/grinding noise from the back of our 1991 Jeep Cherokee was becoming worrisome. We took it to the mechanic, who had serviced the family's cars for years.

He had bad news. What we heard was the beginning of "back end creep," and the back axle portion of the Jeep had to be replaced. It was going to cost, similarly, about four figures.

The folks didn't agree to the service right away.

The state inspection (NY) was about to run out on the Jeep anyways, so my mother took it down to another local mechanic in town, whom we used mostly just for inspections, as he was not as far of a drive to the first mechanic. She asked him to inspect the Jeep, and while he's at it, give us a second opinion on this "back end creep."

This second mechanic diagnosed the problem, and when my mother went to pick up the Jeep, he gave his verdict. A clamp had busted off the muffler, and the muffler was vibrating and grinding on the bottom of the vehicle. The problem was fixed for us for less than one dollar.

Glad you came out unscathed.

Might want to check out the local VW owners community (MIVE) in case something bigger happens to the wife's car and you'd like to find an independent VW specialist that won't rake you over the coals.

michiganvw.org

Hope this helps for future repairs...

I enjoy these stories on the Consumerist. I enjoy them even more when, as here, the identities of the businesses are revealed -- then everyone wins. Thanks!

This happened to me all the time when I owned a older car. 1/2 the crap is easily fixed but shops what to gouge us. So, I'd spend a half hr on the internet googleing my issue or checked out the forums and I'd fix it my self for next to nothing.

Check out the forums for your car(s). A LOT of common issues are documented there and many how-to articles and such.

Similar thing happened to me a few years ago. Sunroof stuck open. Took it to a dealer and they said $1k...new motor, new brackets, etc. Took it to a local guy and he did it for $15...he said it just jumped the track because it wasn't lubed properly...he fixed it, added grease, and it's worked fine since.

Good going OP!

I listen to Car Talk on NPR enough to know that quite a few mechanics are little more than crooks themselves.

I have my own little experience when traveling in Cheyenne, Wyoming when my truck broke down and was taken to a shady overpriced mechanic there, but there was little I could do about that. :(

Now I stick to a local mechanic. :D

I had a similar experience. Check engine light came on, so I took it to a local Firestone to have it looked at since this was a Saturday and they were open the latest. Guy called me a few hours later and said it looked like I had a blown head gasket, and it would take $1000, maybe more, to fix. Sticker shock to say the least.

I brought the car home intending to call other places to get a price quote, when my mom suggested I take it to a small auto repair shop up the road a bit that some friends of hers have used and swear by.

So I took it in, and after a 10 minute inspection the guy came in with a big grin and said, "It's not the head gasket, c'mere . . . ."

The problem was the radiator cap was busted and wasn't creating a proper vacuum, so radiator fluid wasn't flowing through the engine! Simple $10 fix with a trip to AutoZone.

Sine then I've been taking my car to them for every repair or maintenance job, including simple oil changes.

$1,000 or $750 seems pretty hefty for a clutch to me. Now, I haven't had one replaced in probably 15 years, but the last time I had it done, it took a guy 2 hours and cost me $150.

"As I pulled past the big window in the front of the store, I waved at the mechanic and salesman who told me that re-attaching the cable would not get the car started. That was fun."

Reminds me of their slogan, "Well make you happy. That's a promise!". At least they gave you that much.

Seriously though, they just donated $7,000 to charity during last night's Pistons game. It didn't take them long to undo that good publicity.

@Ninja007:

Really? If he's a 180lb guy, that's 2624 troy ounces of gold. At $926/oz, that's $2.43MM - that's a lot of car repairs.

/pedantic mode

PS Yay replay is back!

Nicely done. I had a situation like this with a blown AC condencer. A local firestone shop told me that it would cost about $800 to fix, plus $160 to recharge the system. I looked over their quote - they had me paying about $400 for the condencer. 10 minutes of research on the internet and I realized that I could buy the condencer online for $180 (so a big operation like Firestone must be getting it for even less) and that actually changing out the condencer is very easy. You have to remove the front bumper - which sounds like a big deal - but it actually is very simple and only took me about 1 hour to do all of the work (and this was the first time I did any of this - someone who has done it several times could probably get it down to 30 - 45 min!). At this point I decided to pay to have the system recharged because I read somthing online that said that once the system was open all of the air had to be removed or it would eventually ruin some part - and that the store bought recharge kits would not work for this purpose. So rather than paying Firestone $960 plus tax to get the job done it ended up costing me about $340 and a hour of my time. From mechenics to contractors, 90% of these so called "skilled" tradesmen make their living ripping people off. If the victim is lucky they atleast get the job done when they pay triple what the cost should be. The unlucky victims don't even get that!

Well, it's the classic story.

Guy's car won't start, so he brings it into the mechanic. Mechanic looks under the hood for about 5 minutes, walks away, comes back with a rubber mallet, and whacks the side of the engine. Reaches in, turns the key, car starts right up and runs beautifully. Mechanic turns to the guy and hands him a bill for $500. Guy says "$500? What the hell, you just hit it with a mallet!" Mechanic shrugs, takes the bill back, writes something on it, and hands it back. Bill now reads "Whacking Engine With a Mallet: $5 - Knowing Where to Whack the Engine With a Mallet: $495"

Kudos to the OP for actually listing the crooked mechanic. It is too bad you don't live near Philadelphia - Gene's Foreign Cars FTW!

@ JustThatGuy3:

I'm all for paying the guy to know where to put the 'X' (Variation on your story), but this was just plain slimy of Belle Tire, or to give them the benefit of the doubt, they were clueless how to fix the problem and were throwing parts at the problem. Either way, the conclusion proves that you should shop around and get an opinion. If two mechanics give you the report that the trans is blown, well then it's about price and trust they know what the heck they're doing...

I had the same thing happen at firestone. The facts differ a bit but the jist of it is that they were trying to rip me off for close to a grand.

Awesome! So nice to see a story from Kalamazoo. Otto Khim is two blocks down from my office building - I know where I'll be going next time I need some work done. Cheers, Josh C., from the 'Zoo.

I have also had something similar happen. The brakes on my 97 Golf were going soft so I took them one of the national express brake place. They had me wait about two hours, althought I was the only person there, they brought me in back to see my car. My front right wheel was flopping around like a fish, the brake people said I had to repalcace the whole assembly, 2k was the price quoted. After I refused they popped my pads on and go me out in 5 minutes. I drove straight over to my VW mechanic who showed me the bolt that the brake place had loosened to try and convince me there was a problem with my car.

Had a similar close call, but at the shop where my "guy" works; he's a friend of mine, we consume beers together. This guy was on vacation, & my Accord had an error code for emissions. Last time that happened, it was just a disconnected oxygen sensor. Went to my guy's shop, put it in, then went on a weekend trip. A few days later, the shop is telling me that they have to replace the entire sensor assembly, $600. I deferred to another friend, who told me the cost was reasonable, so I gave the shop the go-ahead.

A few days later, I go in to get the car, & surprise! They haven't done shit, because they ordered the wrong part. I tell them to forget about it, since my guy's on his way back, so I reclaim my car. A few days later, my guy's back, & he confirms that it's the loose oxygen sensor again, which he then reconnected at no cost. Srsly this close to giving some rube $600 for no legitimate reason.

I work at a locally owned petrocan gas station with a garage. For the most part they seem to be cheaper than most other garages in the area. The mechanic charges $8 for a tire plug. The next cheapest place charged my mom $22 (The petrocan was closed for "Family Day"... new holidays for the meh...). And in the time I've worked there I've only heard one complaint about service done.

it pays to know something about cars in these sort of situations. i would almost never blindly trust anyone else's judgement alone on a big job like that, especially if it's the opinion of someone who can profit from their estimate.

in that case, that was blatant bs...

the symptoms you mention - the clutch pedal dropping to the floor - would rarely mean the clutch needs replacement, unless there was some sort of parts failure inside the case - pressure plate, throwout bearing, etc, and you would definitely hear/feel that.

99% of the time if a clutch goes, it's because the friction material wears out, and the symptom will be excessive slippage and or lack of the ability to be able to get into gears.

the very fact that poster's wife was able to drive the car into the parking lot in second gear means the clutch wasn't shot.

To be accurate: I did not laugh in their faces... I simply took the paperwork from the local mechanic inside, showed them the price that they charged me to fix my car, and explained the situation to the manager... I felt like saying something rude, etc., but kept it professional and let them know that I was going to write a letter to their corporate office...
Also, I spelled the name of the local mechanic wrong: it is Otto Kihm (not Otto Khim).
Thank you Consumerist for posting my story!

For VW's a great website for self-help is vwvortex.com
that site has showed me how to fix many problems, and germanautoparts.com is a great site to order parts. If you live in Holland MI Gary's Automotive is the place to go. Belle tire here does have nice people but hence the name tire, not engines, body, electrical etc...

My father was an ASE certified mechanic with Belle Tire until just recently. After nearly 10 years of working with them, they fired him for being late, coincidentally, right after he started having work-related health problems.

From talking to him over the years, I've learned that Belle Tire is a very corporate business. It's run by managers who don't know much about cars, so when corporate says sell more clutches, the mechanics that try to sell them to people who don't need them are kept, while the ones who don't get fired.

This reminds me of the shit that Monro Muffler pulled on my wife during a yearly state inspection. They determined that she needed a new pipe going from the catalytic converter to the muffler, so my dad and I got an exhaust set and put it on ourselves.

She takes it back to Monro, and they now tell her that the BRAND NEW PIPE is broken and we now need a new catalytic converter because we broke it putting on the exhaust. The charge? $1100! My wife called me in tears, and after talking to my dad we took it to my parent's regular mechanic. All it needed was a new flex pipe (catalytic converter was completely fine) and a couple of small cracks welded. The total was $150 including labor.

When I called Monro about this, they said that they didn't do welding because it was "dangerous" and it wasn't a good enough repair - they only did brand new exhaust. I asked them how the car drove without any power problems with a broken catalytic converter then and they had nothing to say. Now we take both of our cars to my parent's mechanic, fuck Monro.

I worked for Belle Tire in the past, and I can say that at least the location where I worked, and those around it, things like this never happened. I can also say that there is very little management over the mechanics though, and I can see how this would happen. Any time you are getting repairs on your car, it doesn't matter what shop you're at, make sure you fully understand what is wrong, what needs to be replaced, why it needs to be replaced, and how much each item is going to cost. I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Michigan any quote for repairs greater than 20 dollars requires that you are given a written estimate, and you also have a right to keep any parts taken off your car, unless the part needs to be returned for rebuilding, in which case you are still entitled to inspect the part yourself. If you're not a car person, but you have a friend that is, it's always good to bring them along.

I wish I could find a "guy". Houston is huge and my car needs work, but I just don't have the time to drive it around to get quotes in hopes I can find one that's honest.

@ModernTenshi04:

I basically had the same thing happen at Firestone. The facts were not exactly the same, but the jist of it was that they wanted to rip me off for about a grand. One thing I learned from this is to get a quote, and then check their prices for the parts against the internet. In my case and AC condencer that Firestone said cost about $400 was available online for $180 (which means that a big place like Firestone was probably getting them for even less than $180) They wanted to charge me for several hours of labor at some crazy rate - I ended up doing the work myself, in about an hour. (This was the first time I had ever done anything like this - if a mechenic had done it a few times before I bet they would be much faster than I was.) I got all of the instructions off the net. It was easy. I won't be going back to Firestone for anything!

I would recommend against ever going to a chain for a repair. They're probably ok for very basic maintenance (tires, oil, filters, etc...) or inspections, though.

Finally we get REAL NAMES with a post! I think it should be a rule that you have to list the names of the CROOKS and the GOOD GUYS when you send in this sort of email. It does us no good if you don't list who tried to screw you and who did a good job. Nice work!

@Cyco - I live on the south side, and have been here for almost 2.5 years. After looking around myself and talking to other employees here, there are no "guys" in Houston. You have to be very cautious no matter where you take it.

@nataku83: Yep, just don't get suckered into the extras like new windshield wipers and all that stuff

@ingenieur: In Georgia we have to have emission inspections every year. Well, my check engine light in my 2000 Mustang came on. I took the car to the emission inspection place and asked for an emission inspection even though I had already renewed my tag a few months previous. They hooked up the computer and it failed, but for $20 they gave me a print out that told me what part of the ignition was bad. I went and bought the part, replaced it, and the light went off.

The kid that usually does my emission inspection had told me about this. It costs around $75 to have a mechanic hook up the computer to your car at any shop. The state emission inspection places charges $20. I usually do all my own work, but can't diagnose ignition problems on these new cars. I saved a few hundred dollars, and maybe more if a shop had tried to gouge me.

I remember Belle Tire. I went to school at WMU back in the day. Just like Tires Plus down here. Not really interested in helping your problem, just out to make the most money they can.

Major Muffler in Santa Monica is that kind of place. I took my old Mustang (since retired) to the ford dealership - one wouldn't touch it, the other told me it'd probably cost an insane amount of money... took it to Major Muffler... they replaced the loose clamp for $40 and had it to me in three hours.

Very happy with them.

To the satisfied customer: Put this on Yelp!

Our mechanic is priceless. He will fix your car without charging one cent more than necessary.

Typical example:
The rear brakes on my 2000 Dakota had been making a terrible grinding noise for almost a month before I took it in to him. I told the owner, "They've been grinding for a while, so it won't be pretty. I figure it'll need new brakes, probably new brake drums, and whatever else I damaged back there." I waived estimate, so he could have charged me hundreds of dollars: I was expecting it to be expensive, so I wouldn't have complained.

He called that afternoon and said, "There was a bunch of mud and gravel packed inside the drums and all up in the cooling fins. I cleaned everything out, the drums are OK, and the shoes still have at least ten or fifteen thousand miles left in them so I didn't replace them. Your bill is $87.00."

(That's Plaza Exxon on Route 273 in Newark Delaware by the way... tell them Bob, the guy with the yellow Dakota and the used cop car, sent you).

@nataku83

You have to watch out with chains even on oil changes. Jiffy Lube tried tried to tell me that when they checked my radiator fluid there was barely enough fluid in it to test it and that I needed my radiator serviced.

Now, I may not know much about cars but I'm not stupid. They were saying my radiator must have a crack but the service they do is radiator flushing. I told them to just fill it up with fluid and I'd have my own mechanic look at it, which i proceeded to do and have the radiator pressure checked. There was absolutely nothing wrong with my car.

But then another jiffy lube I know is really great and doesn't try to sell you anything you don't need (possibly because they are constanty busy wht oil changes)

For those in the Hudson Valley in New York looking for car service, I would tell you to give Jim Bell a try. Here is his information:
Bell Imported Auto Service
30 Carpenter Place
Monroe, NY 10950
845 782 7314

My friends and family have been using his shop for decades. Once you find a good mechanic, you stick with them. Jim is a good, honest mechanic.

@SarcasticDwarf: Had a similar experience. Went to Firestone when my Rav4 started making grinding noises. Charged me $75 and an hour to look at it and say "it's something in the timing mechanism. It'll be $1000 just to look and find out what's wrong, plus more parts and labor later to actually fix it. Oh, and if you drive it it could explode which would basically mean you need a new car." Took it down the street to a Toyota specialist. Turned over the engine once, they looked for 2 seconds said "it's the water pump, need a new one." Had it replaced and running perfect for $250 ($200 in parts) the next day. They have my business for life, and I'll never go back to any Firestone again.

Same thing happen to me here in Vegas a few years ago. The trany on my 1994 Chevy Corsica was slipping and it sure felt like a blown trany.

The dealer quoted me $1200 and four days for a new trany. I rented a car and waited. After five days I had to leave town for business and wanted to know what was up with my car.

They said they lost it, come back in a few days. I was getting a lot of flack from the manager so I called a friend at the local Highway patrol office and asked what I should do? The service manger heard everything and all of a sudden I had my car back, unfixed.

I left frustrated and went to a Best Auto and Transmission and they called me back in an hour and said it was only a bad switch. $62.50!!!

That car ran another two years beautifully!!

I have a friend who is the service manager for a large car dealership in Akron Ohio. He said that all across the country, car sales are so low that dealerships are turning to their service departments to make up the revenue shortfall of their sales departments.

Now, take your car in for an oil change and you will see the mechanics drive it around the block a few times. They are looking and listening for any excuse to sell you some kind of service you probably don't need. Probably has always been this way to some extent, but now, doubly so.

A couple years ago I went to Firestone to have some new tires put on my car. I choose Firestone because I called around with my tire size that I needed to get the best price on tires. So anyway-- I went to Firestone, and the sales guy proceeded to try and rip me off. Okay, I know I'm a woman but I know a thing or two. He claimed that the tires that i was promised weren't sufficient for my car because they would not hold up to the top speed that my car can reach. (I have a '93 Honda Civic. It goes about 80 tops without falling apart!) This is the biggest piece of bull I've ever heard of. He tried to sell me high performance tires that were double the price of what they quoted me. After I said I wasn't going to fall for that, they came out and told me they couldn't find the tires that they promised. I then told them to put the tires on or I was going to take my business somewhere else-- then they tried to sell me some other side stuff. Complete BS. I finally got the tires and went on my way. Well-- it's been a couple years and surprise-- the tires have been fine and have held up just fine. It was the cheapest place-- but it was a pain in the butt to deal with them. I'll never go back.

Reminds me of a famous story in my family:

The year is 1983. The car to have among the new yuppie set is an Audi of some sort (model escapes me). Anyway, my father is at a party with coworkers and friends, one of whom has said aforementioned Audi. Everyone's getting ready to leave the party, guy with Audi gets in, Audi will not start. He rages, now I have to get it towed to the dealer, they charged me a thousand bucks last time, goddamn car, etc.

Dad looks at him, thinks in his head about his own '82 Jetta, and says "I bet I can fix it for a dollar."

Guy looks at him like he is insane. Dad says "I'm serious. Give me a $1 bill. Or $5 if it makes you feel better." Guy hands over $1 bill.

Father pops the hood, uses the $1 bill to clean the dirty contact preventing the car from starting, hands the bill back to the driver. Car starts.

Father lived in infamy for the 25 years after this incident took place.

I have a "guy." He was in the service with my grandfather, helped my dad rebuild the engine in his first car in 1974, and has never given me anything other than the best deal possible. The guy is seventy nine years old and he will get under your car with you to show you what's wrong with it. Right now he's doing all the repairs in the shop himself since his employee (singular, he's got one) broke his arm. His shop's been in the same place since 1956 and he's been running it ever since.

I've had similar experiences at a Tires Plus- brought my car in for a tire repair, and they tried to tell me I needed a new break system. Two other mechanics said I had over half the life left on my brake pads, and everything looked great.

I've since discovered my local trustworthy mechanic, and love them (Paul Anderson Tire in Minneapolis). They've been honest and told me when my old car was beyond bothering to fix. They are less expensive than the chains, the local VW independent, and (of course) the dealerships. They keep my dumpy little car running, and never try to oversell on repairs or new tires.