Quote:
Originally Posted by bigdog
Lessons learned..... NEVER take your car to a repair shop for an inspection sticker. What is the business of these shops? REPAIR ! $$$ They’’re looking for issues, no matter how small….
I now go to my dealer (where I've established a good relationship, buying his cars), and haven't had any issues getting my stickers.
|
I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of dealerships make most of their profit from the service center and parts counter (usually at the same time...) and very little from sales. My worst inspection repair ripoff attempts were at dealerships, but I'm sure there's plenty of smaller shops that are as bad or worse.
My advice is to take it to an auto body shop that does inspections and does not typically do general repair work. There's rarely a conflict of interest in a shop like that.
I recently acquired a used van as payment for some extensive work I did on a Harley. It had been maintained locally by one shop and I found several things that they had done deliberately to ensure future repair work by causing premature failure of parts they installed and other parts on the car. They did things like removing the zirk fitting on greased parts (ball joints, and tie rod ends) and bending the brake pad wear indicators to make the brakes seem to need replacement prematurely. They also did sloppy electrical repairs that corroded. I find this behavior despicable and am really glad I am able to do all my own repairs on all my machines.