PISSED!!!! Help me! Addition: All mechanics are crooks!

[vze28h54@verizon.net (Chris)]

At 02:34 PM 04/06/2002 -0500, Mardak wrote:
>The first thing my high school auto teacher said to the class was: "All
>mechanics are crooks..."  End of lesson 1

So by teaching your class he was running a crime school?

His statement seems overly broad.  My take is that for the most part it is 
not true.  I do think small independent shops - especially those that have 
been around a while tend to be pretty honest.  The mechanics in dealerships 
and chain repair shops are under a lot of pressure to "produce".  The 
results of that pressure are pretty predictable.  Auto repair is an area 
that is ripe for dishonesty.  Consumers are in a difficult position when 
they are relying on someone for expert advice but are being given a "con" 
job by being told that they need parts or service that are not really 
needed.  You just have to find a good shop.  BTW in the Wash. DC area there 
is a "Washington Consumers Checkbook" magazine. (I think San Diego has a 
version of this.)  It is like a Consumer's Report but has ratings on 
services, not products.  They were surprised to find that their statistics 
indicated that there was an *inverse* relationship between price and 
consumer satisfaction.  Consumers that were surveyed seemed to indicate 
that the shops that did the best work were also the ones that charged at 
the lower end of the scale.  Of course, dealerships had the highest hourly 
rates and charged the most for parts.  They also had the lowest rates of 
satisfied customers.  A partial explanation of the results may be that 
people who paid the highest rates for parts and labor were much more 
dissatisfied when the work was not done properly and done so the first 
time.  I used to put a lot of faith in ASE certification, but another 
surprising result was that shops with (at least some) ASE certified 
mechanics did not fare any better in customer satisfaction than shops that 
had none.

Chris