Sometimes it’s not the mechanic that rips you off, it’s you.

[Fargobound]

Originally Posted by JohnBanson

Yep, you're right about the safety & liability issues.

I do all my own mechanical work, and end up working on lots of family members' vehicles. I've really ripped into some of the about the condition of their vehicles (one nephew had literally ground a brake rotor down to the thickness of shoe box cardboard). In the end, I cannot make them NOT be stupid.


So... What did you do about the tire & lack of alignment issue?

I’ve been trying to get a family member to do the timing belt in her Accord for a year and half. She bought this car used with 177k and has no record of it ever being done. I guess when it finally does break I'll never hear the end of it.

There wasn’t much we could do for the customer, except sell them new tires and new tires for the customer’s BMW 5-er didn’t come cheap. If I recall the shop cut them a deal on the mounting and balancing since they were also doing a 90-thousand mile service at the same time. The customer opted for an alignment this time around. The school of hard knocks I guess.

[duster1979]

My in-laws have a Grand Marquis. Right after they bought it they told my wife that they were going to have a new turn signal switch installed because the dimmer switch wouldn't work. Knowing that the dimmers on these cars are activated by pushing the switch forward, and knowing that they were used to Chevys which have switches that are pulled back, I called them up and explained the operation. It turned out the switch was fine.