I own a vehicle that is now 6 years old, bought it 1 year old from a reputible car dealer and have owned it for 5 years. During the entire time I have owned my car I have taken it to the Firestone Store in Saint Charles. Every time I went in for one thing they would tell me something else needed to be replaced. I guess I trusted my car to them and usually went along with their recommendation. I now realize after reading all the complaints on line that they were overselling me at every opportunity. About a year ago I this store did an oil change on my car and shortly before it was due for the next oil change I noticed something was leaking in my driveway from under my car. Since I was due for an oil change I took it in and they looked at it and told me that my fuel filter was leaking. Because I trusted them I told them to go ahead and change the fuel filter and also do the oil change.
So they did the work and told me at that time that my oil plug was also leaking and that they had replaced it. I paid the bill without looking closely at it. A few months later about the time I was due for another oil change I noticed that there was another leak in my driveway. I was getting ready to go out of town and needed new tires, an oil change and just someone to look at it to see what else it needed. So I went back to Firestone and asked them to give me a quote on all the things I thought I would need. Then I went to another shop and asked them to give me some quotes. The tire prices and the oil change at the other shop sounded reasonable, so I let them do the work. I told them something was leaking under my car. So they put it up on their rack and asked me to come out to their garage and look at my oil plug. It was cross threaded and leaking from the work Firestone had done, and someone tried to hide the leak by using some sort of silicone sealant. So I went back to Firestone and told them what the other shop discovered. They took it into their garage, put it on their rack, looked at it and said, "Someone else must have done that". No one else has worked on that car the entire time I owned it, except the last shop that put tires on it and found the leak. I told the store manager at Firestone, "If there was even a slim chance that someone else damaged it, why would I be haggling with you to fix what you broke? Wouldn't I be argueing with the shop that did the damage?"
Then they told me I would need a new oil pan and that I had to pay them $400.00 to have a new one installed. I have been going back and forth with them trying to get them to fix what they broke and they are claiming no responsibility. Then I started looking over my past service bills with them and realized that the fuel filter they claimed was leaking when it was really my oil plug had been changed by them only 5 months earlier. So in other words they changed the fuel filter 2 times in 5 months and charged me about $151.00 each time.
I've e-mailed Firestone's corporate office and found that they don't really care about the damage to my car. They just forwarded my e-mail back to the store that caused the damage. I finally got a call from the owner (?) of this store and he wanted me to come in and see what he could do to fix it. When I asked him what his plan was he said, "I don't know, maybe we can
re-thread it".
Can someone please explain to me why it is that it will cost ME $400.00 for a new oil pan, but if it's something that might cost Firestone money they want to rig my car by attempting to rethread it?
I have since contacted Toyota and they do not recommend
re-threading the oil pan on this car. Then there's the fact that Firestone went out of their way to tell me my oil plug was leaking and they replaced it, made a note of it on the bill and didn't really change the oil plug at all. As a matter of fact it wasn't only stripped but they had put some sort of sealer around the plug so it didn't appear to be leaking. That explains why it wasn't noticable until it was due for the next oil change. They screwed up my oil pan and tried to hide it by putting sealant around the plug. I asked them, "At what point were you going to tell me that you stripped my oil plug and I needed a new pan?" They had no answer for that one.
Since then, I have talked to 6 people on the street (total strangers) and this is no joke 5 of the 6 people have had problems with this store and will never take their car back. One lady told me she had new tires put on her car by this store, was charged for balance and rotation and told she needed new shocks. They charged her for all of the work and within a few days her car started shaking on the highway. She took it to another shop that looked at it and told her that her shocks were old and hadn't been replaced. She went back to this store and they gave her a refund for the shocks they didn't put on but gave her nothing back on the labor portion of the shock replacement.
I'm angry that I am stuck with the bill to replace an oil pan that their shop damaged and they have not seen or heard the last of me.
I highly recommend that anyone that has had a bad experience with this store, contact the Missouri Secretary of State and file a consumer complaint on line.
Gloria
Saint Charles, Missouri
U.S.A.
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