It's not just the shops who rip people off!

On a quarterly basis, there is a customer who comes in and claims faulty workmanship. The case is usually that the customer has tampered with their vehicle, or the repair that needs doing has nothing at all to do with the service we have performed.(EG: Oil change performed, customer claims no oil put in, drives 1500 miles, comes back and we find that there's a blown seal on the other side of the engine, customers intentionally replacing dipsticks with too short or too long dipsticks, etc...) We have no problem at all with making things right in our shop -- if we broke it, we will happily fix it and probably comp you a service to boot. However, the overwhelming amount of people who feel it necessary to rip off a shop makes it hard for the people who legitimately have a claim to get it recognized.

I'm sincerely hoping that I don't become so jaded in my view of the customer that I give up entirely and simply close the doors. We're an honest shop, but it's hard to run an honest shop when our customers aren't honest.

Steve Says,

Thank you so much for your contribution. It is VERY important to remember that there are a lot of great shops out there. I have seen some of the same things you have mentioned. There are a lot of customers out there who will rip off repair shops in one way or another. I have found that the vast majority of the time when a customer has some type of problem with the auto repair work that I have done it is not because I have done anything wrong, it is because they have not educated themselves on the repair that has been done.

One of my main goals being an auto shop manager is educating the customers as to what to expect, what the repair warranty covers, etc. It is much easier for everyone to get along if they all understand one another.

Thanks again for your story, and I hope the customers reading this will put a bigger value on their honest mechanic.