My brakes starting making noise so I thought I would take my car into the brake specialists. My thinking was that since they do this stuff all the time, it should be pretty easy and relatively painless. Well, I called and they said that their four wheel friction realign is what I needed from the what I described. I thought $100 to get it out of the way, no big deal.
Well, I took it in and they had me come out to the bay with them. I thought that was kinda odd since they had not even looked for the problem. They had my car up on jacks and taking on tires in no time.
One of their workers stood with me and made rather friendly small talk while we waited. They also popped my hood before taking off the tires, which I thought was odd. Within minutes, they had their fast talking head mechanic come out and make a list of everything that would need replacing. I just thought it was going to be a simple deal, but he started showing me cracks in pads and uneven wear that indicated "big problems".
The worker assigned to stand by me seemed to be unaware of any problems until they were all listed by their fast talking mechanic. He then became an expert on the problems and quoted me $1000 to fix everything.
Needless to say, I was shocked, so I wanted to call my personal friend who is a mechanic. I could not get in touch with him, so I told them to wait on the work. I was then lectured on how unsafe I would be and how I should not be driving even the five miles home. So they kindly gave me a ride home while I waited to hear back.
I talked to my mechanic friend and he told me that they were most likely full of shit and I should not have them do anything at all. They seemed to not like that idea and proceeded to try to make a deal with me. Trying to make things simple, I said that I did not have the money for the work they wanted. At which point he asked if I could borrow it from a friend or put it on a credit card.
I said that was not possible and they came up with the idea of his manager "loaning me money". At this point I ad already decided that all I wanted was my car back.
They said it would be 2 - 3 hours before they could put it back together when I was not cooperating. So I made tenative plans to bring it in next week, at which point I had my car back in 30 minutes. They then called me two more time to try to work out smaller amounts of work they could preform. I repeated the fact that I did not have the money, so I was finally able to pick up my car.
I then proceeded to a AAA approved shop and asked them to look at my brakes. They came back after about an hour (small waiting line) and said there was absolutely nothing wrong with my brakes beyond a slight glaze on my roters from the bad weather we had the previous week (lots of snow). I asked them if they needed to replace anything and they said that the pads were almost new on the front and the back still had quite a bit of time left.
I then proceeded to tell them the story of Just Brakes and they laughed and said they had heard similar stories. So what I learned:
NEVER use Just Brakes or probably similar shops, find a local honest shop with good mechanics (AAA approved seems to help) and give them your business even if a bit more at first, it will save you money and time in the long run.
0 comments