Ive tried to get my old truck fixed at multiple independent mechanic shops. And all ive gotten was jerked around. So many of them have excuses and take for ever to complete sinple task.
Also ive found they frequently lie about prices and
Are shifty when you ask auestions. Ive had this happen so many times i think im done.
Looks like for now on im going to dealerships only. Atleast then i know jobs will get done quickly.
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Sadly, the skills needed to run a business and the skills needed to be a good mechanic don’t overlap. It’s rare that you find both in the same person. Some of these guys are bad people, I’m sure, but others are just bad businessmen. And, for customers, that translates to frustration.
Isn’t it obvious?
Who would *want* to crawl around in grease, oil, road grime, and crushed up cheerios and piss, cutting their fingers, hands, and arms, ruining their back and knees, dooming themselves to some form of cancer (if you evade all the other dangers long enough to see it), and deal with universally unhappy, rude, ignorant, entitled, and ungrateful people **all day**, *every day*, with virtually no hope of ever earning six figures for yourself no matter how long of hours or how good at your craft you get, for the length of your career?
The only people who do it, are people who don’t have any other good options, and aren’t super happy about it.
It’s a dead-end from the start. It’s hard, dangerous, dirty, and thankless work with low earning potential and no sense of respect or admiration around the trade/profession in our culture.
Source: guy who worked on cars for 10 years, and very narrowly got out of the “trade” side of the industry and changed career paths.
Anecdotal but… You get what you pay for.
Ask around about “cheap” or “low cost” mechanics and you’ll walk away with a shitty experience. Suck it up and accept that good service costs more money and… well, the shop I patronize ain’t cheap, but they’re quick and it’s done right. Every time.
That’s why, when you find a good mechanic, you stick with him forever.
And some of them are very bad. Check out the “Just Rolled In” YouTube channel and see what travesties were carried out by “another shop”. It’s not usually as bad as work previously done by the customer’s brother-in-law, or the customer themselves, but it’s plenty bad.
Good fast cheap, pick two
You gotta find a mechanic that is a shitty business owner. You can’t have both. My diesel mechanic that works on all my machines literally sends me an invoice 100-150 days after the work is done but he’s the absolute most efficient and brilliant mechanic I’ve ever known. Especially in the electrical systems. I honestly don’t know how he stays in business with the way he invoices. Lol
Here, it has largely been the opposite. Shady dealerships known for the whole “oh, our inspections are free”… but we just happen to find $1k worth of “necessary” stuff every stinkin’ year.
Now the independents are doing that, too. I’d wager if it was opposite where you are, you’re seeing the same thing, or will soon. Bad behavior not punished by government regulation spreads like cancer until it’s ubiquitous.
If anything happens to my scrupulous Mennonite mechanic, IDK what I’d do.
While I do not run a mechanic business, I wrench a lot on my own shit and on the stuff of friends.
Lying about price isn’t a thing. It’s what we call an **estimate**, which means they will tell you what the repair cost based on what they know. If you have an old shitbox truck, when you take it apart, stuff will break because either it was already about to fail, or it broke during disassembly. There is nothing anyone can do about this; it’s the nature of wrenching.
Now, I do wrench on my own stuff because I save a ton of money on parts (rockauto, scrapyard), and because 3/4 garages give shit service. I believe there is a ton of factors into this.
1. People don’t want to spend money fixing their car right, and always try to find ways to cut corners to save short terms pennies on the dollar.
2. Cars are substantially more complex than they ever were, where sometimes the most simple of repairs becomes a nightmare. A friend of mine has an Audi that uses torque to yield bolts for the direction. Never in my life have I seen that (it’s also extremely retarded if you ask me). What you think as a simple task might actually be much more complicated than you think, and what the mechanic thought himself.
3. Mechanic is not an easy job, and doesn’t pay well. I am sure the good people probably leave independent shops which can’t pay them the same salary than a diesel heavy truck type of deal.
4. I suspect most jobs the average mechanic does is maintenance stuff; brakes, suspension, oil changes, tires (which are super easy) and there is probably one or two guys that do most of the timing belts or harder jobs.
IMO, never better served than yourself.
It is more about the people running the business end vs the people running the repair end.
Had a great shop. Owner retired and gave the business to their grandson.
Same techs, different management.
Quality went to shit.
They never put oil in my engine after changing the timing chain at 200k and doing the regular maintenance.
I didn’t even make it to the freeway before the engine was toast.
Pulled the dipstick and it was dry.
They refused to fix it saying that it was a preexisting condition.
I went to the bureau of automotive repair to get them to fix it, and even then they argued that there was no difference between a used engine and a rebuilt one. BAR ordered them to make it right. They didn’t.
Licenses were lost, techs left.
Lawsuits followed. It took years.
They went bankrupt before paying, but I ended up getting reimbursed some during the asset sale.
My mechanic is a one-man shop and his wife manages the business. They work great together and their labor charges/parts markups are about 40% less than the dealership. Plus he’s honest; many times I’ve asked him to check something out and gotten a “well, you could replace ______ but if it was my truck I’d only do ______ for 50% the cost and then drive it another 20,000 miles.”
But it takes 2-3 weeks to get on their schedule, so you aren’t going to roll in there at night and demand they fix something the next morning. It’s worth the wait. Took me 15+ years to find this guy and I’m glad he’s only about 40 as I plan to keep using him until I’m done driving. When I asked around for mechanics for years I kept getting similar to OP– “We’ve use XXX shop but they screwed something up.” The dealers have even worse reputations in my area, so I’ve only used them for warranty work. But this guy came recommended by a neighbor I trust and he was right.
Agree. I have a good mechanic I found through Next Door recommendations but unfortunately now he has so much business it takes weeks to see him.
Mechanics come with the built in urban myth of being con-men/people. They’re judged very harshly and receive a lot of flack. I don’t know how this myth got started.
There are some damn good independent mechanics, and they’ve usually been at it long enough that they have established a reputation within the community. Ask around. A good independent mechanic will have a lot of repeat business and people will be happy to tell you who they use, I certainly do that with my mechanic.
An independent mechanic might rip you off if they happen to be greedy and not care about their reputation, but dealership will *definitely* rip you off as a matter of corporate policy. Even if every single person working at the dealership is a decent guy, you will still get screwed.
Your best bet is to ask around and find shops that are trustworthy. I live in a small town so that’s relatively easy. It might be a little harder to do in a city, but certainly possible — when I lived in a city we had “our regular guy”. We sometimes had to wait but he always did right by us.
But going to a dealer is the absolute worst move you can make.
Lmao. This belongs in r/skilledtrades
I’m pissed. I’m convinced nearly every mechanic does not possess the skills to rebuild transmissions and/or engines. The skill set doesn’t exist and these shops charge $5k for a shoddy repair job. I’ve had 2 experiences with major repairs. 1- 2007 Honda Pilot timing belt snapped last year during the height of ridiculous car prices. I paid $5,000 for the repair, valve job, machined head, the whole thing. It’s now puffing smoke when it idles and the mechanic is saying pistons even though all my research and other mechanics agree that it is likely a valve issue. They had it for a month and gave it back screwed up. 2- 2004 Jeep grand Cherokee. Rebuilt transmission at a reputable shop for ~$3,500. It would get stuck in 3rd gear and slam into 4th when heated up after I got it back and they couldn’t find the problem and wouldn’t fix it. It eventually went out completely in 30k miles.
At the end of high school it was assumed by many that I was going to end up being a mechanic. I’ve got good mechanical aptitude, got top marks in all my shop classes, and at that time I was very much into old muscle cars. But the thing is I also spent high school working as a gas jockey at a family owned service station. Decent mechanics there, but more low-tech old school skills. I also worked at an auto dealership in the parts department. Seeing the industry from a few different perspectives, my only plan after school was to find a job that has nothing to do with mechanical work.
My opinion is there are small shops that are shady and unreliable because they can be. People get this idea that because their door rate is 1/2 or 2/3 of the price of a dealership that they are way better and will never question the outcome. They’ll put in the cheapest of the cheap jobber parts (poor quality) to keep the bills down. I’ve observed a lot of “part swapping” diagnostic behaviour where they don’t really have access to the necessary diagnostic tools, flow charts, etc for more complex issues and just keep throwing different parts at it until it is fixed. And the customer ends up eating the bill. If you find a good, honest backyard mechanic, treat them right and stick with them. But if you find yourself dealing with somebody where the repair bills keep adding up without a good explanation, it might be wise to get a second opinion.
Dealerships can have some crappy mechanics too. Many are no better than the back yard types. But a good service manager will generally find ways to make things right, even if it means the dealership eating most of or all of the bill.
For what it’s worth, most mechanics are swamped. A lot don’t want to work on junk. How bad is your truck?
I’ve had two great independent mechanics in my life and have stuck with them for years. One of them counselled me against pouring more money into my used car saying “you could put $2,000 more dollars into this car and you wouldn’t have a $2,000 car.”