Quite frankly, all of these franchise places thrive on doing questionable repairs on unsuspecting customers. I have listened to pitches given to customers while waiting for my oil change in various places throughout the country and always am amazed at what I hear.
I used Tire Choice at Colony to change the oil in my Lexus and they called me and told me I had a leak in my transfer case and needed a $2500 repair. I was told they see this at least once a week on my model car. I was a bit perplexed since there was no sign of a leak on my garage floor.
I told them I had an extended warranty on the car with Lexus and they said ' oh, this type of thing isn't covered by your extended warranty ' ( how would they know ?) and I should let them fix it right away. They said they would disassemble and rebuild it for me ( scary for a tire place to do this ).
I took it to Lexus and in fact they did find an ever so slight beginning of some seepage in one of the seals and replaced the entire transfer case at no charge under warranty. That's because You pay a premium for a Lexus car and they stand behind it. They told me it was cheaper for them to replace it then expend the labor to rebuild it.
I believe that few of these franchises are guilty of outright fraud. I would think that, as in my case, if there is any sign of an impending problem, ever so slight, they probably embellish the issue a bit and convince you the world will end if you don't get it fixed. My opinion is that many of the things they ' find' are either minor and likely not to become major in our lifetime. Quite frankly, if my car wasn't under warranty I would have probably monitored the situation for quite some time to see if it got progressively worse.
I needed new tires for my infinity and researched thoroughly what I wanted. I went to Tire Choice at Colony. I wanted a particular Michelin tire. They tried to sell me everything but the one I wanted saying it wasn't available.
I went to Tire Kingdom down past the Best Buy shopping plaza and had the tires in 3 days....
These places don't make a lot of money changing oil. It's everything else they try to sell you that creates high margin for them so buyer beware!
|