Car Repair: A Cautionary Tale
Let me tell you a story.
We live in a place with mandatory annual car inspections – they cost $16 and ensure that car owners keep up with all the important maintenance on their vehicles. I think it’s a good idea.
So our second car, a 99 Honda, was coming up on its inspection date. It needed a new muffler, so we figured I could take it in, get the oil changed, the muffler replaced, and have it inspected all in one fell swoop. We’d called around earlier and from what we understood a replacement muffler could be expected to run us $70 or so.  It all sounded pretty reasonable.
So, anyway, I take the car down to a local chain outlet that has usually done well by us in the past:
This time they didn’t treat us quite so well, as you’ll see after the cut:
I got there first thing in the morning and put in the order, telling them I needed an oil change, a muffler replacement and finally an inspection. No point getting the inspection before the muffler was done, because it wouldn’t pass until without it, anyway. That was when I got the first case of sticker shock: They wanted about $250 for everything.
Here’s how it broke down:
- $16 for the inspection
- $30 for the oil change
- $70 for labor
- $110 (approximately) for the muffler.
Add in a few taxes and fees and you get $250 – which was about double what we had expected to pay. I wasn’t a very happy camper. The guy who took my order (the service department’s assistant manager) couldn’t give me an exact price because he said he wasn’t sure which of three mufflers would fit the car – but as they ranged from $105-110 I wasn’t that concerned about which one we needed.
Fast forward three or four hours: I get a call from the shop. It seems none of the mufflers they have in stock will fit a 99 Honda Civic, and they’ll have to special order one.
For $201!
Now the cost has about tripled! I ask if they’ve already done the oil change – tell him not to do any more work and come down to grab the car. I’m sure it doesn’t legally count as a “bait-and-switch” but it sure felt that way from where I stood.
I get down to the shop, and pay for the oil change – and they’d also done the inspection – which the car failed as expected. Needless to say, I was furious. They had been told not to do the inspection until the muffler was replaced – and they had told me all they had done was the oil change.
We’re not going there again.
We checked around a few local places – and they wanted anywhere from $160 to $270 for the part. It seems that on the 99 Civic the muffler comes as a piece with the flex pipe that goes over the rear axle and that’s expensive.  It was also unnecessary, as the flex pipe on the Honda was fine. All we needed was a new muffler.
After a series of calls we found a small place in the industrial district just north of town, which said they could get it in the next day for about $70. So I took it in the next morning – and they actually managed to get it done for $60!
And yes, it passed inspection.
So, what was the big difference between this place and all the others?
They only fixed what was broken.
All the other places wanted to replace the flex pipe as well as the muffler, as a unit. This place just chopped the bad muffler off the end of the perfectly serviceable flex pipe and welded a new muffler into place. Total cost was lower than the chain outlet was going to charge for labor alone.
So, what’s the point of this story?
Make sure you’re not paying them to fix what isn’t broken.
The more you spend in a single visit, the better a service center does. That being the case, it’s always in their best interest get you to have as much done in a single visit as possible. There’s no benefit to the chain outlet in cutting the muffler off the pipe and welding a new one on. They charge $95/hour for labor and that’s much less labor for the same basic job. The place we finally had it done only charged $50/hour for labor – which is part of the reason we got away so cheaply:  less work at a lower rate.
Now it’s true we didn’t get a genuine Honda replacement muffler assembly. But we didn’t need one. We just needed something that would both work and pass inspection, which is what we got.
Also – the reason we’re not going back to the chain outlet? It’s not just the appearance of a possible “bait and switch;” it’s also that they did work that hadn’t been authorized, and misinformed me about what had been done. They were told not to do the inspection until the muffler was replaced – they didn’t replace the muffler so they shouldn’t have done the inspection. Second, they told me the oil change was the only work they had done – so either they did the inspection after being told to stop work – OR – they told me it hadn’t been done when it had.
Well that’s all for this special Sunday edition.
If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to use the box at the bottom:Â and thanks for reading.
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Did they give you a refund for the inspection?
I would have been so angry!
The re-inspection was free – and since we would have had to pay for the inspection once anyway, that worked out alright financially.
We were and still are very unhappy with that company.