I went to Auto Spa to have the oil in my truck changed after spending two days driving due to the evacuation of southeast Louisiana because of Hurricane Katrina. After the storm destroyed most of the New Orleans area, I was kindly taken in by relatives in the nearby city of Houma.in fact, the city of Houma was now home to many storm victims. Anyway, the fact and the reason for this complaint is that while waiting to have my oil changed, a service technician entered the waiting room and approached the gentleman next to me. He said that his car's transmission fluid looked very dark and old and that he cshould have it changed and that they would be more than happy to perform the job for some absurd fee. The gentleman astonished by this replied with the knowing fact that this technician's claim was completely aburd because the car's transmission was serviced and the fluid changed only a few weeks prior. This set me on guard.
Sure enough, not even five minutes later, a different technician walks in and approached me and says he needs to show me something. We walked to my vehicle and he takes off the oil fill cap and runs his finger along the inside lip of the filler tube, which rises about 3 inches from valve covers, and wipes off the viscous oil that has accumulated along the rim of the tube from three years of previous oil changes and proceeds to tell me that I have an oil sludge problem and that for an additional $39.95 they would be happy to flush out my entire engine and that it'll only take 10 minutes. He wiped the inside of the filler tube!!! This is by no means an indication of an oil sludge problem! It is simply old oil that gets cooked from the high engine temperatures! This infuriated me. However, it wasn't finished yet. He then tells me that I might have a bad battery and that my battery posts and terminals have sever corrosion, but that they can replace them for $5.95 each. I then tell him I know he is full of it because the bettery was just replaced 5-6 months ago and that if they are so horribly corroded that I just clean them myself using the old Coca-Cola and wire brush method.
I was so mad at this point that I told them to just perform the oil change, close my hood, and return my vehicle. However, just so they could have the last word, they told em I needed a new air filter. Which, despite the fact I knew I needed a new one, I told them not to touch it.
After all of this, I proceeded to the counter to pay promptly made a very audible statement to the counterperson that I was aware of their scam, thta they picked the wrong person, and that I was immediately reporting them to Louisiana State Attorney General's Office for consumer fraud. Upon hearing this, several waiting customers asked what had happened. Of course I told them all the course of events and warned them all. One lady thanked me and said that she would have fallen for anything they would have told her because she doesn't know much about cars.
My advice, plain and simple, is for everyone to avoid this place at all cost. They are a car wash first and an oil change service second. Their technicians are not ASE certified automotive mechanics.in an effort to increase profits, they employ scare tactics to frighten you into purchasing services that they are not even certified to perform and do so at nearly twice the rate of any honest mechanic.in addition, their oil change service is full of hidden charges. The advertised $29.95 oil change ended up costing $41.01.
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