For Those of you who have had a car into the dealership for repairs, You know that within a few weeks you find yourself on their mailing list, and are privileged with “special deals” that mostly consist of adjusting the content of your wallet. My professional advice:  Ignore them.

It cracks me up just to read them sometimes. Sure, many services are legitimate, but they aren’t a deal.  They just add wording to the description to make it sound like your getting more.  I got one for a Honda dealership recently that I still want to call up and ask about.  It says they will “adjust the idle and timing speed” as part of a service.  Since most cars now have a computer controlled throttle, i dont know how they would adjust idle.  But timing speed?  In all of the ASE tests ive taken, and service manuals i have read, Ive never seen an adjustment for “timing speed”

Here are some other things I’ve read, and my translation of them.

“Free (your favorite number) point inspection”.  Translation:  For free we will look at your car and find other problems to sell you repairs on”

“Free brake inspection”  Some guy will come out and shine a light through your hubcaps and tell you you need to spend money.

“fuel saver package”:  regular service interval, and you need new tires.

“free tire rotation”:  If you don’t need brakes, we will find something.

“fuel injector cleaning”:  we have a payment due on the injector cleaning machine

“transmission flush”:  we have a payment on that machine too.

“$20 (or less) oil change”:  a teenager will strip your drain plug, then paint it, install an oil filter that cost us less than a 2 oz bag of chips, and glug in 5 quarts when your car takes 4.

“tune-up”: we change the spark plugs and pretend we did all the adjustments the computer does automatically.

There is always something wrong with a car.  not something dangerous or neccesary at that instant, but if you bring a car in for service, it will need something.  Its not cruel, its not a scam, it is just reality.  The trick is to find the mechanic that will be honest and tell you. “ya, you could use this, but it can wait”  or honestly tell you when something needs to be done now, before its too late.  We are that kind of service center, but to keep my credibility as a bloger, i will never say where i work.

Posted on April 13th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized