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We have moles in the industry, clandestine servants of automotive justice who seek to keep money from leaving your wallets through deception. Ok, it’s not quite that exciting, but we’ve seen lots of honest mechanics and former technicians surface to offer insight into the occasionally below-board tactics of bad shops. This report stood out as especially interesting, coming from a man who’s spent most of his life in the automotive parts and repair industry. He offers some great tips:

• Become informed/educated. Regardless of item, be it automobile, home, TV, computer, etc., an informed consumer stands a far better chance of getting honest repairs than someone who just drops the car off and writes a check for repairs they are told they need.
• Dealerships. A technician in a dealership works on billable labor hours and follows shop policy and a published flat-rate manual. If the manual indicates that it takes 6 hours to change the heater core in your 2004 Chevrolet, then 6 hours will be what you are billed for. The down side to that is that in order for the tech performing the work to earn their minimum commission, (yes, they do not work on a straight hourly wage) they have to produce approximately 100 billable hours per week during a 40-hour work week. Since typically “beating flat-rate” can’t be done on a consistent basis, dealerships introduced the “special packages,” that put a tech in the out of sight, out of mind consumer zone. Under the car. Cooling system, exhaust, transmission, shock, strut, tire and brake specials all designed to get the consumer’s car on the rack for a closer inspection. If you ask for the special, be sure to bring the coupon that advertised that special, and ALWAYS get a 2nd opinion if the tech indicates that once they got your car on the rack, more problems were found.
  
• I’ve seen tech training classes where they were taught to squirt oil on the shocks or struts, and then inform the customer that those expensive suspension components were leaking hydraulic fluid and would require replacement, and then obviously a 4-wheel wheel alignment must be done to insure the quality of the new components.
  
• Subscribe to your make/model consumer and enthusiast websites and blogs. There is a world of information there and normally there is an administrator to keep comments in line and many of them have excellent search engines by topic/component.
  
• Purchase a repair manual. Even if you don’t tackle the repairs yourself, you’ll learn and become at least familiar with the systems and repairs of your car.

  
  
  There’s much more, but these tips should at least get some of you off in the right direction.

The tactics he’s describing aren’t the norm, but these things do happen. If you’re aware of these worst case scenarios, you won’t be an easy victim and slimeballs will move on to the next poor sucker, leaving you with a proper repair and money in your pocket.