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)
We have a 2012 Fiat 500 and a couple years ago two different tire shops (from two different chains) told us our car was feeling a little bouncy to them and that it may need suspension work soon. I hadn’t noticed, but I wouldn’t call the car “not bouncy” either on some bumps. So when I had the car in for service at a Fiat dealership sometime later I told the service advisor and his response was “Did a tire shop tell you that? They do that all the time to try and get more money out of you. Those parts are built to last much longer than the mileage on your car. Don’t worry about it.”
So, I’ve learned to trust tire shops less…
I had that happen twice with Belle Tire. The first time they tried to get me to replace the front control arms on my car which were “dangerously close” to failing. Bullshit, my regular mechanic had just gone over the car a few weeks before and found nothing of the sort. The second time they told my wife her car’s brakes needed new pads, rotors, and calipers and that the rear calipers had locked up due to corrosion. She knew the rear calipers being locked up was a lie because the car drove just fine. When she said she’d take the car to our regular mechanic the slimy bastard had the gall to say that he didn’t feel right letting her drive away in a car that was dangerous to drive, especially not since she had our daughter with her. I can’t remember what exactly she replied with but suffice to say they took the car off the lift and gave her the keys back. The brakes actually did need new pads and rotors, but our regular mechanic did the work for half the price and cleaned the calipers instead of replacing them.
Not monetary, but “Could not duplicate” is the absolute worst.
Back when my car was under warranty, it started running rough, sputtering, and had no power. I brought it to the dealer and asked them to look at it while performing a recall. They returned it “could not duplicate”. Fine. Then it happened again a few days later. By pure luck I was a few blocks away from the dealer. I pulled out my OBDeleven and logged some fuel pressure data real quick. It showed low pressure after the HPFP. I limped the car to the dealer, still datalogging, parked it, went to the advisor and said “hey, my car is running like crap, it’s outside still running if you want to scan it right now in case it doesn’t do it again after you restart it, but I also have a datalog of wacky fuel pressure”. They left the car running for an hour, never touched it, turned it off, held it for a week, and returned it with “Could not duplicate problem” and refused to acknowledge my datalog. I get it, you can’t make the fault appear on command, my datalog was limited to a few parameters (and may not even be admissible for a warranty claim), and techs have other stuff going on, but I gave them the perfect opportunity to at least plug in a laptop and do a quick scan while it was being funky and they said “nah, no thanks” and proceeded to spend the week putting 100 miles on it, probably beating the piss out of it, trying to make it do it again to no avail.
Heard a “slapping” sound coming from the front of the block on my son’s Jeep 4.7 engine. Took it to the dealer, they informed me that the engine was in the process of self destruction, and were citing fragments of metal found in the pan as evidence. Price to replace block $4,500. It was running fine apart from the sound, so I decided to take it to a local garage for a second opinion. He put a scope around the block and quickly determined that it was a bad timing chain tensioner. This was confirmed once he got inside it – the nylon guide had worn away and the metal in the oil was from the chain wearing into the unprotected metal of the tensioner. Quote for two tensioners plus a new chain was about $1,000. Still bad, but not nearly as terrible as the guys who didn’t want to do anything but unhook an engine and drop another one in.
A non automotive enthusiast friend called me about his 2017 Chev Colorado withe following issue
Temp gauge low, coolant fan running all the time , no A/C.
He was quoted 1185 for thermostat replacement including diagnostic check and antifreeze at the dealership as this is a common problem with the V6 Colorado they assumed it was a bad thermostat.
He’s freaked out.
I scanned it ,DTC P0128 low engine coolant temp.
80$ from Rock for a thermostat housing with thermostat in it.
14$ jug of the “special” coolant.
1 case of beer for labor .
Less than a hours time including pulling in and out my shop and he was on his way.
I was a case of beer richer minus the couple we drank while working on it.
Early 90s and the mechanic comes out with motor oil all over his hand and tells me that my “carburetor is leaking oil” and would need a complete rebuild costing $$$$. As ridiculous as that sounds already the car was fuel injected.
Run away!
My buddy’s XJ Cherokee had a worn timing belt and was screeching like all hell. As we parked the car a dude came up to us with a heavy Spanish-speaking accent telling us it was DEFINITELY the “Carbulator.”
Been a joke ever since, going on 30 years. Flat tire? Carbulator. Failed fuel injector? Definitely the Carbulator.
A BMW dealer once quoted me $2900 to replace a leaking oil gasket. My local independent German car guy put it on the lift, found 4 bolts that were loose, and tightened them, fixing the problem. He didn’t charge me.
And now your local independent German car guy has a customer for the life of your BMW. Not long probably unless you get another BMW.
When I was in college in the late 90s the transmission in my Subaru GL wagon started to fail. I could shift into gear but a lot of times it was hitchy and didn’t shift well. I took it to a local Aamco, which gave me a quote of $2700 for a rebuilt transmission. Mind you this was in the 90s for a 10+ year old car in suburban Buffalo NY. Complete ripoff. I found a local mechanic who diagnosed it as a failed gasket causing coolant to mix into the transmission. I paid $80 to replace it along with an AT drain and refill. The car ran for another 2 years before I sold it, still running.
My partner has an 09 Impreza with the 2.5 and around 120k miles. Good car, overall…then the dealer said: “Your Impreza has a stage three oil leak. We need to pull the engine and replace the head gaskets.”
It’s already had the head gaskets done at 60k by the previous owner (at a dealer, so they used shit gaskets). Anyway HGs were combined with several other items (brakes, which I did myself, and a power steering rack, which I paid them to do as it had an actually noticeable leak). The total cost was over $8k, with the head gaskets being at least half that.
Anywho I was highly displeased with the news of the head gaskets and chose to ignore it. It’s now been two years since they told us about that “Stage 3” oil leak. The oil level barely drops between changes and there’s not even a drop in the driveway.
This is only one example of where the trust issues come from
I’ve been lucky. Back around 1980, my Renault 5’s engine started making a ticking noise and seemed to be down on power. I took it to a reputable shop, where I was told it needed an engine rebuild, which they would do for $800 if it didn’t need any major part replacement.
So I said “The heck with that!” and bought tools, a jack and shop manual. Engine out, and since I had gotten that far, replaced all wear parts, as well as having the alternator and starter (you haven’t lived ’til you’ve yanked a starter from an R5) serviced.
When all was said and done, the car ran better than ever — I may have left a smog device or two on the garage floor — and, even if the total came near the shop’s estimate, I had learned a new set of skills that gave me a lot of pleasure over the years.
Oh, and the only thing really wrong with it was a bent pushrod, which I replaced for what I recall was less than $10.
Took my Renault to the mechanic and after a thorough 100 point inspection they diagnosed it as being built by the French.
$600 in labor to replace the timing belt/water pump on my ’05 MDX was reasonable. I supplied the new timing set and factory coolant. They found and fixed a worn motor mount too.
I recall paying $300 for a tow and fuel pump on my ’84 Fox Body LTD in college (I was left stranded). It was carb motor too, no FI or electric pump.
“You’ll have it back in a couple of days.”
Two weeks
This is what came to my mind reading your reply…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b40P861l6pM
I remember a movie “The Money Pit” as a kid. The answer to every question was “Two Weeks”.
Tom Hanks and Shelly Long. Great movie that still holds up today. Especially if you’re a homeowner.
I worked with a project manager that we nicknamed “Two Weeks Meeks” for the same reason.
That’s the one!! Early rental whan dad bought the VHS. First rental was Top Gun.
Yes, I still recall the first movie we rented was Top Gun.
I accidentally found a new shop in my new city. They were the first well-reviewed shop willing to accept my tow. They’re so busy all the time they beg you to get your car ASAP. They’re on a street corner in a busy part of the city and have to play car Tetris all day to accommodate all their customers’ cars.
Honest, hard working guys. The repair and inspection were pricy, but they retested and reinspected everything for free after a minor issue with the paperwork and suspicious electrical symptoms.
I had that recently with a body shop. They said they could have the repairs done in 3-4 days… It took them 3 weeks, then when I went to pick it up, there were sections that they had not finished, and what they had done looked worse than what comes out of my dog when he gets his mouth on a slice of pizza. It then took them another 2 weeks to fix it and do it right. All in I didn’t have my car for over a month.
Had a Kia Dealer (Car Pros to be exact) try to quote me for $2.5k to fix the oil seals on my Optima. Sensing shenanigans, I found a highly reputable shop for a opinion.
The second shop correctly diagnosed a leaky oil pan gasket and fixed it for about $400. The tech I spoke to actually got really mad about the Kia dealer saying it’s people like them that give mechanics a bad reputation.
Upon informing the Kia dealer about the second opinion, the service advisor got really annoyed and went off on whether I’d trust anyone to work on a Kia (it’s not a Ferrari or Audi, so a decently qualified mechanic should be fine) and how they constantly have to fix the other shop’s work.
4 years later, and I’ve yet to have an issue with the new shop I use for all my work. While they’re a little pricier, they do great work and don’t try to pull a fast I’ve on me.
$3500 for 4 struts and pads/rotors from a tire shop, due to a harsh vibration in my brothers car. He brought it up to my place, we did the brakes, and noticed that one of his tires was MASSIVELY warped out of round. The tire shop hadn’t even recommended tires. The tire shop MISSED the bad tire? I have no idea how they missed it if they actually put it on a lift and looked around under there, so I assume they didn’t.
Brakes were like $175 total and he borrowed a rim/tire from me to go home. Car was perfect on the drive home. So he got a new tire.
Hopefully got the tire from a different shop!
My last 4 probably qualify, all in CAD.
For my daily (dealer quotes), $3200 for a slow leak on a transfer case, and $2600 for an new A/C compressor and refrigerant charge. I just top up the case when I change between summer/winter tires, and I replaced the compressor clutch with ebay parts for $150 and a few hours fighting with the circlips.
For proportion of vehicle’s value, $3500+ from an indy shop for brakes on my beater F-250, which is about what I paid for the truck. Well under $1k from Rock Auto and a summer’s afternoon wrenching solved that.
For sheer brass though nothing beats the local Porsche dealer’s quote for a timing belt / water pump service on my late 928: $4800 or so, including $1750 to replace the tensioner. The workshop manual says to rebuild it on the bench, so I pretty much stopped asking them after that.
Looking for the next toy a few years ago, on my list of potentials was a 944. I found a really nice 944 Turbo, paid a bit more than I wanted but it came with a HUGE binder of reciepts and paperwork back to original delivery in 1987.
I decided to take it to a local “Porsche specialist” to get an oil change, and a look over. He called me a day later with his assessment & recommendations.
A few seemed ok, hood struts seemed silly but whatever, I forget a few but I remember distinctly casually saying they could do an alignment. I figured it couldn’t hurt, expected like $200 or something. That ended up being $600 that he swore he was giving me a deal on.
The thing had ancient tires (about the only minus, I thought, but learned more later) so why TF would I blow $600 on aligning tires on the way to the landfill?
(Later I learned about “balance shafts” and a multitude of other things this “specialist” SHOULD have caught. I sold it a year later, live and learn.)
Not a mechanic, but…
We had a leaking ice maker water line, leaking into a utility room below, and the plumbers tried to get us to do a gut rehab of the bathroom which was also above the utility room. New tub new floor new subfloor, new tile…
This was the early 1990s. I was manager of my father’s used car lot. We had an on-staff mechanic for minor repairs. We also had good relationships with the various parts stores and dealerships around town, so that our parts costs were at least reduced from what the average person would pay.
We had an Audi 4000 in stock that we couldn’t have paid more than $2k-$3k for. It needed a power window switch. I called our friend at the VW dealership and he said he’d get one right out to us for $482. Four-hundred eighty-two dollars. I asked him to double check that was just the switch and not like the entire door.
Yep.
So we passed and I had sourced one from a salvage yard instead. There were other instances of a part’s cost being many times what it shoudl have been, but this one sticks out.
$3000+ for a complete brake system replacement on a 06 Hyundai in 2010. Car was driving funny at highway speeds and I heard brake squeaking. Took it to the local Hyundai dealer who said that they couldn’t find anything wrong but were willing to replace all of the brake components.
Seemed shady to my 19 year old brain so I found an older brother of a friend from high school who opened up his own shop. He looked at it and determined that the parking brake cable was corroded and was engaging because it was loose occasionally. $100 dollars for a cable repair and the car was fine.
That Hyundai dealer has been through several different owners in the last 15 years and is still shady af
My 2009 Escape was leaking transmission fluid in 2014. I took it to the local Ford dealership, and they told me the transmission was overheating and needed to be replaced. $4,000 to get a reman unit. I took the vehicle to an independent transmission shop I’d heard good things about. The owner called me a few a hours after I had dropped it off and told me the axle seals were failing, a very common problem for that generation of the Escape. He replaced them for $160.
I still despise that dealership for trying to rip me off like that. Assholes.
My ex-mother in law had a 2007 Mini Cooper. It was a nice car. She got in a fender-bender at the front of the car. Bumper, headlight, and hood. But it also jiggled something loose in the engine bay and the car wouldn’t start.
I took it to my euro mechanic, and they diagnosed a bad ECU and it was $2000 for an ECU coded to the car from BMW. I thought it was a little crazy, but oh well.
I called the insurance company and told them this. They said, “nah, an ECU is like $200 from the junk yard. We will pick it up from your mechanic and get it fixed for you.”
So they took it to the body shop and got the damage fixed. The car was beautiful again. But then they got to the engine part and found out the issue. They called me and said “oh, you can’t just swap the ECU for a junk one. You need a new one from BMW coded to the car. And it’s $2000!!” No shit, you don’t say.
That additional $2,000 pushed the car into being totaled.
Had the top of a spark plug break in one of the cylinders of my car and had it towed to a shop as I couldn’t get it out. I show the tech the broken spark plug, and he then proceeds to try and start the car and is surprised it runs so poorly and I’m like dude, I’m holding the spark plug from one of the cylinders
They then say they’ll do spark plugs, wires, and an oil change for 500 bucks.
I just towed the car home, and end up pulling the engine and rebuilding it myself.
$450 to replace a TPMS sensor on a single tire or they’d do all four (since they’re battery operated and if one’s failed the others are likely close behind) for the low low price of $900. I politely declined. I eventually took it to a tire shop and got it replaced for about $50.
Oh I’ve got a decent one, my 2003 GX470 I sold at the start of this year. I had done a good bit of work to it, with only a couple minor things I knew of left over, and an out of state buyer got a PPI done at the local Toyota dealer. This chain has a reputation for overcharging on everything. What came back was a quote for almost 11k worth of repairs on a car I was trying to sell for 10k, and that I had 8k total into. Every single thing they could find they quoted, including $800 for a new spare wheel/tire.
The painful part was that the shop that isntalled my new Power Steering rack had done such a catastrophically piss poor job that it warranted the PPI to quote a new rack, PS lines and reservoir (that I had just replaced), AC lines, and Oil pressure sensor, because the kid that did the job screwed everything up. The shop ended up fixing most of their collateral damage (looong story, not a happy ending) which covered about 6k of the dealership quote, but the dealer sure did tack on a lot of nonsense. Needless to say, I paid the $100 for the PPI and went on my way.
$5000 parts and labor to replace cracked exhaust manifolds on 2004 Nissan Titan.
I guess you ignored the “Warning!!! Danger to Manifold” message. Did the floorpan fall off?
Granny shiftin not double-clutching like you should…
2700$ for a rack and pinion for an 01 Audi A4. Hence I grew some strong ass arms by not doing that repair