How Honest or Experienced is your Mechanic / Repair Shop?

What should you pay?

When getting your car repaired or maintenance done, you have a choice of independent mechanics, chain shops and franchise dealers.  The price differences between those are significant.  When we priced out the exhaust on an Infinity that had been damaged in transport, the Infinity dealer quoted us $6000 to replace the entire system, the chain exhaust store wanted $2500.   We chose to have the damage welded for a few hundred dollars at an independent muffler shop.  Three years later the weld is still holding strong.   Quotes for a transmission issue for an Audi ranged from 9000 to 2500 dollars.  It pays to shop around.

Is the repair necessary?

In addition to price differences, it helps to be aware of how you’re being sold.  When you walk into a shop, the friendly person you are talking with about what problems your car is exhibiting, is in most cases not the mechanic but the Service Adviser, a job that is almost always a 100% commissioned sales job.  Most people trust this person blindly and agree to do / pay for whatever this person says their cars “need”.  You should ask questions and interact with them with the healthy skepticism you apply to sales people, not the blind trust you give to a consultant or someone who is on your side.  Good questions to ask are “what happens if I don’t do this?”  or “how many miles or months until this really needs to be done?”  Often they will evade the question or say it can’t be said for sure, they should be able to give you a rough idea, e.g. if it needs to be fixed in 20 miles or 20,000 miles.  When the brake squeekers are coming on, you usually have a couple thousand miles left before you’re metal to metal (in which case the car will still stop but you’ll scratch the rotors), but a good thing to know especially when it comes to brakes where scare tactics are often effective.

We put these theories to the test and took a Mazda pickup truck that was not shifting right to three different shops for diagnostic and estimates.  The first shop wanted to sell us a clutch.  The second shop said the shift linkage needed to be adjusted and the third shop wanted to sell us a new transmission.

Doing your homework can save you thousands of dollars.  For expensive repairs you should get at minimum a second opinion.  If that is different than the first, maybe you should keep going.  We would love to hear your stories.  For questions visit our Facebook group  Women’s Wheels – get your car questions answered