Can you trust your mechanic?

musicprnt
Mon, 22 Feb 2016 22:29:08 +0000

@himom:
Yep, that is sears automotive, despite the fact that they claim they no longer give their ‘service advisors’ a piece of anything you buy, they will tell you all kinds of things. The best were their “lifetime” shocks and struts, the only problem is when they went, they would tell you before replacing them you needed new springs, new tires, and wouldn’t replace them unless you bought the other services (basically, it is a sham warantee, their US head of service told me that if they had to honor those warantees without the extra work, they would go broke…when people ask me if they are worth it, I tell them go to a garage and get them to put in Monroe shocks and struts, won’t need to worry about them for another 100k miles…

One of the other problems is that many local mechanics are honest, but they don’t necessarily have the skills or the equipment to diagnose problems, so they do things the old fashioned way, replace things until the thing works, then charge you. I really wish I had more time to work on my cars, it is frustrating when Honda wants 400 bucks to replace my hood latch, when a brand new latch (OEM) from an outside dealer with the cable was like 70 bucks, and my labor, well, would be free:).