You see, there’s this greedy shop owner who’s waging his own personal war against the knowing. You’d better look out if you wind up having an unsuccessful repair at this shop. When you show up at his door with a clunk on bumps, and the shop owner or his staff sell you shocks, you’d better not complain when the shocks don’t fix your problem! Because if you do, you’re history. Really!
If The Boss says you need shocks, you need shocks. And when the shocks don’t fix the problem, Mr. Authority comes back at you again saying that you most certainly needed them, and you also need ball joints and upper strut mount bushings. You’d better not question his diagnosis. You’d better not argue. Just curtsy and hand him your money. And just so long as you remain the unknowing, you’re business is welcome.
Customers who bitch and complain about the cost of the repair had better watch out! The boss man angers easily, and he’ll quickly tell you to take your business somewhere else and to never come back. And your name gets put on his black list. After all, there’s plenty more customers in the D.C metropolitan area. And even better, many of the customers are transient and will never come back anyway. Diplomats, attaches, and their staff. Lots of money and lots more where they came from. Mr. High and Mighty’s shop doesn’t need a good reputation, just lots of advertising, like full page ads in the Sunday paper.
Speaking of advertising, one foreign car repair shop in Tampa bought full-page advertising in the phone book. Hard to believe. No, it wasn’t a car dealership. However, they did sell used cars. They did have a parts storefront too. Thanks to tourist dollars, which are in abundance in Florida, and that big ad in the phone book, our phone never stopped ringing.
The person who you spoke with was Ed. Most convincing of all people I’ve ever met, Ed. He was the service writer and could talk a duck out of his feathers. Ed came on ever so gentle and mild, drawing in his prey with sickening sweetness. You’d never think he was capable of anything but your best interests. Then he would pounce on you, turning into a pirate. Once he got a hold of your car, man you were toast. He was so excellent at making up and creating so many wild scenarios. Non-existent problems. Once he got your car in the shop, your wallet would simply empty right out.
And of course you never came back after experiencing Ed turning from Mr. Nice Guy to Jose Gaspar, the pirate! It was an amazing sight to see. After the customer saw the bill, then had a moment to pick herself up off the floor, the screaming would begin.
Ed’s mild mannered face would turn into a Jose Gaspar, and he’d go into his scary routine. Systematically, he’d attack and belittle the customer for their negligence. He’d blame them for the way they treated their car. He’d harp on and on about how bad it was before we fixed it.
It was absolutely amazing how a clunk on bumps complaint could turn that money crank! By the time he finished with you, you got all four shocks, both motor and transmission mounts, a couple of ball joints, maybe both upper and lower ball joints if he figured he could get away with it, and some custom exhaust work to boot. Oh, including a complete set of exhaust hangers. Whew! He was brutal. And if you came in with a starting problem, you always got a starter. Maybe injectors or a carburetor, too. Not to mention the usual cap rotor, plugs, wires, and ignition coil. And maybe throw in a sensor or two.
But, the Ed story is unusual. Interesting, but unusual. As I have said again and again, almost all mechanics and repair shops are honest. The National Attorneys General study showed that the whole problem of rip-off auto repairs really stems from problems with communication. No Duh.
I just saw a statistic that said something about how mechanics spend eighty percent of their time trying to figure out what’s wrong. The rest of it is easy, with only 20% of the time needed doing the fix. Wow. Four-fifths guesswork. One-fifth fixing. Pretty scary, huh? Roger that. I mean, it’s gotten so complicated that even a genius can’t figure it out anymore.
They’ve got dealer service bulletins, independent service bulletins, dealer tech hotlines, independent tech hotlines, and of course, call-in radio shows. And still, people can’t get their cars fixed right the first time! And why not? Well, according to that Attorneys General study, the whole problem is communication. Right. Like the guy knows the service advisor is telling him the straight story when he says he needs shocks?
So, does the mechanic mean to rip off the customer most of the time? No. Usually the customer rips himself off by not communicating his problem. The rest of the unsuccessful and knowing people with problem repairs can be chalked up to a bad diagnosis. And the bad diagnosis resulted in an unnecessary repair. The unsuccessful as in unsuccessful repair and the knowing. The owner clearly sees that the problem is still there.
Then there’s poor preventative maintenance habits. And since lack of maintenance doesn’t fall into one of the four categories, we’re not gonna’ go there. To put a wrap on my lecturing, I want to share with you one of my favorite rip-off tales. A story that falls in the category of the unsuccessful and knowing. Over the years I’ve been told this story by many different techs, as well as shop owners and other auto industry personnel. Here’s it is, with a few embellishments of my own:
I hate my job. I am an assembly line worker at an automotive plant in Michigan. I build cars. Boring. Same thing hour after hour, day after day. Yeah, sure the pay is great. Yeah, sure the Union benefits are terrific. Yeah, sure. Dull. Yawn. Snore. ZZZzzzzzz. Someone wake me up when it’s quitting time. I’ll do ANYTHING to fight this boredom!
Hey, I know what. I’ll play a practical joke on someone. I’ll think of a real good one to pull. A real whopper. A real wing-dinger. One that will drive you nuts-o, daddy-o. It’ll be a real zinger. Not an easy one. No. A hum-dinger. A mind blower. Now lets see.
Okay, I’ve got it. I’ll make a time capsule. Put a message inside and seal it up r-e-a-l good. Seal it up in a nice piece of metal pipe, a nice little pipe with my note inside. And I’ll leave it behind for someone to find. Someone far away, far, far from today. Someone in the future. A message for someone to find real far off in the future.
I’ll just drop this nice time capsule in side of this body panel, and leave it for someone to find way off in the future. And it’ll rattle around in all its glory, clanking and clunking its way through the day, until finally someone discovers it’s there. Until someone cuts open this welded shut body panel and finds my capsule inside. He he, he he!
Noise? What noise? has been the routine for so many years. Dozens of techs have been assigned the job of finding the evasive Ssshhhh clunk noise. Hundreds of dollars spent, with nothing but the same old sad report, No problem found. Of course, the owners had to pay the diagnostic fee, along with environmental surcharges and shop fees. And the noise persisted.
Eventually, someone does find it. But not until the first owner of the car gives up trying to get his clunk on stops problem fixed. He trades it in. The next owner fights like hell with the dealership that sold it to him, claiming he got stuck with a lemon. And the car passes through a couple of other owners' hands until a savy repair tech uses a high-tech listening device to track down the location of the noise.
Inside a body panel. Something loose inside this panel. He cuts open the body panel to find out what’s loose inside, and retrieves the time capsule. Fishing it out with his long-skinny grabber tool, he retrieves the metal capsule. And when he unscrews the cap and looks inside, he finds the note left by the unhappy practical joker factory worker so many years ago. Unrolling the scrolled-up piece of paper he reads.......
Editors note: This shhtt..clunk! story has been around for decades, and has become an urban legend for auto mechanics. The kind of car is usually a Cadillac. The time capsule has been anything from a metal film can, prescription bottle, and pipe. The location has been inside the frame, body, and kick panels. The sound it makes is always the same: An intermittent clunk that’s accompanied by a hissing sound, but happening only when braking, sometimes. The owner reports hearing it come from under the seat, inside the door, in the dash, and the trunk.
The lessons to be learned from this Mechanic’s Nightmare are: • Always expect the unexpected. • Do whatever is necessary to be a witness of the problem. • Make it happen, then record the circumstances involved. • Look for connections (or clues) between the circumstances involved when it happens and the actual problem occurrence. • Beware that the problem you’re dealing with may have been built into the vehicle right from the factory.
