I recently took my vehicle to this Midas shop. I did this because the brakes were making a bit of noise when I slowed down off of the highway. My car only has 45K miles.
By the time I had a chance to blink, I needed new pads, rotors, shocks, struts, back breaks cleaned, a fixed arm in the front left, a transmission flush, etc. Etc. I did trust the mechanics to know what they are doing, and agreed to all of their recommendations. I know, I am an idiot for trusting someone that is out to make an extra buck, but he was telling me about his kids, and pretty much earned my trust in a short amount of time.
When I got home, I filed my automobile documents and noticed that I had new front struts put on just over a year ago. Yep, they lied to me. I immediately called and the manager was pretty nice about getting me back in, and putting on the old struts. I was refunded the cost of the struts.
The argument ensued over whether or not I deserved to be refunded the labor cost. Now I realize that every part has a designated amount of time it should take for them to be installed. This particular Midas charges $82 an hour and said that each strut takes one hour. They charged me $164 for labor even though it took them about 45 minutes to install them. This was similar for all of the other parts and service that they provided. When I mentioned this to the manager, he stated, "I can't be blamed for the fact that my guys work fast!" Well, no sir you cannot but you also shouldn't charge an exorbitant amount for hours that were never worked either. Anyone who works 40 hours a week for a year at 82 bucks an hour will make over $170,000 a year!
The manager agreed to refund half of the labor cost but pocketed the other $82. I told him that this was unacceptable. He told me that I should have memorized all of the previous work done to my car and should have informed him that the struts were already replaced. Well, I would understand this if I had gone in to have the struts looked at! But I only went there to have the brakes fixed. I assumed that if they were saying I needed struts, there was an actual reason. Here was their reason, "The maintenance schedule suggests replacing struts every 50K miles." Yes, you read that correctly. Chevy does not recommend new struts every 50K miles. When I said this to the manager, he stated, "I was talking about the Midas maintenance schedule." So they don't even look at the actual Chevy recommendations. Nice. I will never know just how badly I was ripped off this week (especially with new rotors after only 45K miles) but I do know that after he hung up on me today I will never be returning to this store.
As he hung up, he told me to call corporate. I did that today. If corporate actually helps me out, I will definitely update my post in a positive manner.
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