My brother recently had a similar experience. He got an oil change, then realized that the brakes were acting up (not stopping quickly, odd sound, etc). He took it to a mechanic who said there was water in the brake lines from the oil change and that all of the lines, seals, etc needed to be replaced, to the tune of about $1200.
Went back to the oil change place to complain, and they told him to go get a second opinion.
Took the car to another mechanic, and he said that there was no water in the brakes but that the disc on the brake needed replacing- $300.

When we needed a mechanic I started asking friends for an honest one. I got the same name from 3 different people including one who told me he went to church with them and would give a “Jesus” discount to Christians.

My husband met our mechanic through a friend at work. This man works at a local repair shop across town as a manager during the day, but truly enjoys working on cars in his spare time. My car is a mid 90s model that we bought new, and it just hit 100,000 miles. We haven’t had much trouble, just normal maintenance until recently. The alternator went out, the battery went bad, some belts needed replacing, and something with the engine was leaking oil, and it was running hot. Whenever we have an issue, we call our friend, he stops by after work to assess the situation, and then he orders the parts. He is able to order them at the wholesale price through his employer, and we pay him that cost for them. We try to pay him a small amount extra for his time, but all he really wants is a hot, homemade meal that I am more than happy to make for him. His wife left him recently, and he isn’t much of a cook, so a hot, homemade meal is worth more to him than money that would be spent on eating out or frozen dinners. It is a wonderful arrangement that saves us quite a bit of money!

My suggestion is to always ask around for recommendations when you need work done, and if you find someone good and trustworthy, spread the word! Often times, we have services we can offer in trade that may not seem like much to us, but can mean the world to the recipient!

In a small town there are few options and some times merchants charge more or take advantage because they are the only game in town, but it all depends on the ethics of the individuals involved – when I lived in a small town we had a wonderful, honest mechanic that had his own shop in the garage behind his home and was consistently less expensive than the dealership and we had were able to work out payment arrangements on more expensive repairs.

I now live in a big city and have come across many shady and/or incompetent shops. I large chain store try to charge me over $150 more than what they had quoted me without legitimate justification (they tried to say an alternator was mounted different than “standard” – I advised I was told that they had actually looked at my car to determine what was wrong with it and if that was the case, it should have been brought up when quoting me a price. I refused to pay – they said they would keep the car until I did. I threatened to sue and said I would rent a car and include the rental charge in the suit – they were hostile and let me have the quoted price but told me never to come back. I found out the reason they backed off when I threatened to sue was because it was a standard mount – they had simply tried to take advantage of me because I was young and female and they thought I wouldn’t know any better or challenge them).

To find a good, honest shop asking people you know and getting their recommendations is a good start and if one place gets consistently good reviews from people who do not know each other (some times people will recommend someone because it is there friend or relative and be blind to that person’s ethics) is a good place to start.

Another is if you know someone that works on cars, even if they aren’t able to do the work for you, call the shop on your behalf to discuss what they think may be wrong and what to check can prevent a shop from overselling you on stuff you do not need.

A good mechanic is worth his weight in gold. When dh and I were living in a city in another state years ago and were one income/one vehicle, we were at the mercy of bad mechanics. I look back and shudder at how young and stupid we were, and how we got screwed.

Fast forward twenty-some years and a move to small town America, and we’ve had the same mechanic for at least fifteen years now. The only time we don’t use him is when our car is still under mfgr. warranty. He’s as honest as the day is long and we are so thankful to have found him. We’ve referred plenty of people to him. Good, honest mechanics are out there–word of mouth is the best advertisement.

I lucked into our mechanic. I’d always taken our cars to the dealer, as that’s what I was taught to do by my father. But when it was time for a new timing belt, the local Honda dealer wanted $900 to do it. Add in the fact that the dealership had changed ownership, and I hated the new set-up, and I started looking elsewhere.

It just so happened that some coupons landed on our door, and one of them was for a local mechanic–a Honda specialist, even! I decided to try him out and use the 10%-off service coupon. Turns out, I loved the guy! The mechanics are all very friendly, and they never talk to me like I’m stupid. I’ve never once gotten the impression that they’re trying to pull one over on me. Additionally, they’ll call my husband for me (when I ask them to) if I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Their prices are very reasonable. (That timing belt change was HALF of what the dealership was charging!)

We’ve been using them ever since. And for some reason, I’m under the impression that the owner is a Christian. Just a feeling.

Shannon, I agree with you. We do try local business first, and we do tell them why we will or won’t be back.
My mother had a refrigerator repairman in today, he works with a big contract company 45 miles away. He told her that the small local repair shops are all going out of business around here and he’s not surprised as every service call he makes he hears about how the local guys never show up when they say they will (not late- they don’t show up period, and you call and reschedule and they may or may not return), do a shoddy job when they do come, and are careless about a number of things. It’s sad, really. because it does not just hurt them, it hurts new small businesses, because older people in particular are wary of taking a chance again.

I couldn’t afford the costs of taking older vehicles to mechanics, so I started learning how to work on cars myself with the help of coworkers and friends. At the beginning I was the kind of person who was so clumsy with things that I occasionally broke off spark plugs in the cylinder, or various other interesting mistakes. Nowadays I can do most brake, suspension, and simple engine work easily and cheaply with a solid day of work and some nice weather.

It is my intention to each of my three daughters enough about automotive mechanics to be able to recognize when they are being lied to or taken advantage of.

Knowing what I do now, I regularly catch various shops trying to cheat co-workers and friends. Dishonest mechanics and dealerships count on the average person not knowing how the various vehicle systems work. I have come to believe that they evaluate your description of the problem as their means of shows how much you understand. The terminology in particular is very telling.

One person above said they were told there was water in the brake system after an oil change. That’s an interesting claim. A person who knows how brake systems work would know that it is a closed system with no interaction with other fluids. It would be impossible for water to get into the brake fluid unless someone deliberately opened the brake fluid reservoir and poured it in (which indeed would be very bad).

One of the most common scams I hear about is the replacement of break calipers. It’s common for brake shops to tell customers they need the calipers replaced at some ridiculous price of $800-$1,000 when in fact all they need is a new set of brake pads for $50. Calipers almost never need to be replaced, and will generally last 30-40 years, yet every year I come across someone who has been told this. In fact a brake shop recently tried to pull this scam on a female co-worker with a 2007 model car and only 20,000 miles.

Another scam is the constant flushing of fluids, especially transmission fluid. Generally speaking, tranny fluid only needs to be flushed once every 60,000 to 100,000 miles, though I have known people who never flushed it. Once, I heard a person say they were told it needed a flush when they had just had it done 7,000 miles earlier. What a scam! The quick change oil shops have been in the news every couple years for scamming people on services they don’t need, and often fail to perform when paid to. One of the major networks repeatedly caught Jiffy Lube taking payment for a flush and then not performing the service but saying they did. Make sure that anyone selling you a fluid service has just pulled the “bad” fluid from your car in front of you. Don’t take their word that it came from your car unless you see it first hand.

I recommend that if your husband can’t do the oil changes, have it done at Walmart. The reason I say this is because auto service is not a primary business for them, and they are not big on upselling. The only reason they even perform auto service is to have people sit in the store and hopefully buy other products. If all you want is an oil change, that is probably all you will get. In contrast, a place like Jiffy Lube will try to sell you every product and service under the sun, and can be extremely pushy about it to. Walmart is also unlikely to sabotage your car because they do not perform real shop work.

We live in an era where the average man doesn’t know how to work on cars anymore. It’s sad, but true. Apprenticeship is by and large a lost art these days, and Fathers often give a referral to a mechanic rather than a lesson. The amount of money that can be saved by doing it yourself though is astronomical, and many of the common maintenances that people spend $500-$1,000 on are just $50-$100 in parts.

At the advice of a friend, one of the ways I learned to work on cars was to go to the local “you-pull” junk yard and disassemble things. When I broke something by accident, no one cared, and if I pulled it off successfully it was left in the car for anyone who came along that needed the part. Invaluable experience without risking your own vehicle.

I need to get a lot of work done on my minivan. Well, I guess it’s just regular maintenance stuff, but there’s so much to do at one time. Great post for saving money on such an expensive item.