The vast majority of us have had to pay to repair a car at some point. Ideally, the labor is skilled, and the quote is affordable. But that’s not always the case, so I ask you—what is the worst repair quote (or bill!) you’ve had from a mechanic?
As car enthusiasts, a great many of us take pride in doing our own wrenching. At the same time, we can find ourselves in situations where we can’t do our own work. Maybe we don’t have the space, or the weird, obscure manufacturer tool to do some odd and challenging job. In those times, we have to hand the job over to a professional and trust that they do it correctly and for a fair price.
I’ve had some nasty ones over the years. When I crashed my first car into a curb in 2008, I sheared the Watts linkage right off the differential. The quote to replace the differential was over $1000, which was a truly insane figure for a 17-year-old me. This was perfectly justified on the mechanic’s side—it cost $800 for a wrecker diff, and took a couple of hours of labor to install. Instead, I elected to go a cheaper route—asking if they’d instead merely replace the damaged back plate on the diff, and refix the Watts linkage. They quoted me $300. Reasonable, right?
Only, things didn’t stay reasonable. The workshop was right next to the caravan park we were staying in, and we saw the car sitting outside for most of the day. It could have been inside the shop for an hour or two at most. Only, the mechanic then rang me at five o’clock with a long story about how hard it had been to remove the bolts on the diff cover and how they’d spent “all day” working on it.
I knew this didn’t check out, since I’d seen the car hadn’t even been in the workshop for most of the day. I rustled up my friends and went down to the office to discuss the problem. The mechanic retold the same unconvincing story to four unimpressed teens. His efforts to pad the bill would come to naught; the problem was that I simply didn’t have any more money.
After the fourth time, I flatly stated I had $400 and not a cent more, the mechanic gave up. I paid the bill and we left, pissed that someone had tried to bilk us for more money.
I’ve had a few nasty experiences since. The most recent from the mechanic working on my Audi TT. He suggested replacing the wipers, which was suspect enough given I knew they were in peak form. He wanted $130 to do the job, particularly shocking given you can get a set for under $50 and most parts shops around here fit them for free. Offering to change the cabin filter for $125 also felt pretty egregious. There was also the time ten years ago when a Mazda dealer wanted to charge me four figures for a cam angle sensor. That sucked, too.
These are my tales, though, and this is Autopian Asks. So I turn to you—what is the worst quote you’ve had from a mechanic, and what went down?
Image credits: Lewin Day (provided)
$500 for a new set of O2 sensors on an Aston Martin.
It’s not the quote that was so bad, really. That’s about right for 4 sensors and Aston Martin labor prices, and it’s a reasonable first attempt at fixing an O2 sensor CEL. Except that I’d just told them that the O2 sensors had already been replaced at least twice in an attempt to fix the problem, and were reading completely reasonable once they’d warmed up but probably weren’t getting preheat power for some reason.
After some back-and-forth, they were finally persuaded to dig a bit deeper in the diagnosis first. They ended up replacing the actual ECU for quite a bit more than $500, but at least it actually fixed the problem.
Last winter, our 2016 Golf Wagon popped a P0420 code, which can mean only one thing: the catalytic convertor has left the chat.
We live in an emissions test county so we had to get the check engine light to clear so we could register our car. The car was at the dealer to complete a recall repair and asked for diagnostic and repair quote. Mind you, this is a 9-year-old car with 110,000 miles…
The dealer quote: $5900. Talking to the service advisor, they recommended going to an exhaust shop and having them make the repair. It seemed like the service department at the dealer wanted to focus on the Porsche and Mercedes vehicles they make more on, not our lowly 10-year-old base-model station wagon.
Ended up doing it myself. Ordered the catalytic convertor from Unitronic for $2300 and the Stage 2 software. Four hours start to finish in my garage, the car up on ramps. Would have been done sooner had I kept the muffler clamp in my cart from FCP; had to run to the dealer for the clamp I had to cut off because rust belt.
Definitely NOT a $5900 repair, plus the wagon is now almost as fun to drive as our GTI.
Moving from Michigan to Louisiana. 1100 miles. Two cars, 3 adults, three cats and an old, old dog. We were supposed to stop and spend the night just south of Nashville, but an our on the wrong side of Bowling Green Kentucky, the 2017 Honda CR-V I was driving stopped giving me power, I couldn’t get it up over 30. We pulled to the side of the highway (never fun) and waited for a tow truck to haul my butt to the closest Honda dealership. They diagnosed the turbo as having de-laminated itself and shitting the bed in a way that they had never seen before. IF they could get the part, the MIGHT be able to do it by Saturday (This was Thursday late afternoon, my wife started her new gig on Monday). The part was $3500. We opted to rent a car (another long and sordid story) and had the Honda shipped down to Baton Rouge. They were great, they looked at it and gave me a detailed price breakdown. Of $12000. The car wasn’t worth more than 9, and we owed a bit over 8! We paid it off quick and sold it to a junker place for $3500.
how many miles on it when it died. Less than 100,000? Bad quality. Do not buy list.
uh… i think we put that it was about 170,000. It gave us very little trouble, well, until it did.
170k-respect
My Volvo started groaning on the highway, and it was getting worse. I usually took the car either to the local Volvo dealer (expensive but would always provide a loaner) or a local Firestone (this location was actually decent in terms of price and service). For whatever reason, I decided to go to the local “European” “indie” shop. It seemed to have good reviews online. There seemed to be no Volvo indie shops in the area I lived at the time. This shop was full of old BMWs and Range Rovers, but not a single Volvo in sight other than an abandoned 240. The mechanic told me the noise was from my transmission leaking fluid – I needed a “transmission flush” for $1000 and also had a bad CV joint that would be several hundred more. They insisted on a deposit for the work as well. I remembered that I had replaced that side’s CV joint a year or two earlier as I left the shop – sure enough, I found the receipt at home. I later took the car to Firestone for a second opinion – the CV joint was fine, but the wheel bearings were shot, resulting in the noise, and there was certainly no need for a “transmission flush”. (The transmission was shifting just fine and did not in fact have a leak. There was an unrelated engine oil leak only.) The wheel bearings’ repair was pricey, but at least it fixed the problem. Throwing money at a “transmission flush” and needlessly replacing a new CV joint wouldn’t have solved anything!
My 04 Acura TL 6MT went to the dealer for a recall. They called and said it needed front brakes and they’d do the job for $750.
I bought a set of pads for less than $30 and changed them myself in about 1/2 hour (Brembo’s are easy to replace). The rotors mic’d fine, so dealer was trying to scam me on replacing those.
This was about a decade ago, maybe longer. Let’s start with that you know it was going to be expensive because German. I was driving to Green Bay for a preseason game and then was going to spend the long weekend somewhere in Door Co. Before getting to the Fox cities area I noticed a misfire. If you know anything about Audi coil packs you know where this is headed. I didn’t at the time. B5 S4. Unbeknownst to me the threads of 1 spark plug got ruined. It made an awful sound. There was an Audi dealer nearby still open for an hour on that Friday.
Tuesday morning I’m on my way back in a rental. I get the news. $6K for a new head and $3k for labor. They told me that it must have skipped time due to a bad timing belt tensioner. I found a spark plug in the center console. Something didn’t feel right about this. I told them to have it towed to my local shop that did the timing belt job not that many miles ago. And if it slipped time both heads would have been trashed. They were busy so it took about a week to get around to it. In the meantime I was shopping for a new car because there was no way in hell that I was going to spend $9k on this.
They checked the cylinder with a horoscope, put in an insert, rethreaded it, installed a new plug and coil pack, and sent me on my way for $500. That repair lasted as long as had the car and then some. Later I also upgraded to the 2.0T coil packs so that the problem would not come back, because it did misfire on another cylinder at some point.
Heard so much craziness at the BMW dealership when I was taking my MINI in for the 2 years of free maintenance.
Young lady had brought her BMW in for a CEL and the service advisor came into the waiting room to let he know her gas cap was loose and they could fix the problem for $75. She happily agreed and I stayed far away from that dealership after the last free service.
Oh, that is really sad. I don’t know if the lady was single or pretty or what, but for good will purposes alone, I’d have tightened the gas cap and sent her on her way for free. I guess I wasn’t cut out for car sales or commercial wrenching.
Me either. A local TV news station once tried to sucker the Toyota service department I worked in as a service writer by having their news guy pull onto our service drive in a Toyota truck with a loose mudflap to see if we’d keep him there and upsell him. I grabbed a mudflap and a wrench and had him outta there in 5 minutes. Even dumped his overflowing ashtray.
The worst repair quote I got is the one where the mechanic/shop refused to give me a quote and told me to scrap the car because it was too rusty (a 2005 Ford Focus Wagon that I owned up to 2018).
Then after taken off the lift and it being moved 10 feet, the front passenger wheel decided it didn’t want to be connected to the car anymore.
I got something like $300 in scrap value for it.