Watch Out! Fire Sales Spell Trouble

Tough times across the economy are forcing many repair shops to let go their higher paid workers and replace them with low-skilled entry-level employees. I see many major retailers spending lots of money trying to attract new customers on ads in radio and tv. As always -- buyer beware.

Your vehicle is a serious investment and should not be left in the hands of an unskilled or barely trained repair person. You are setting yourself up for disappointment and serious financial loss. Fire sale specials on tires, brake and oil services can only mean one thing: inferior parts being installed by low-wage workers. This is an economic fact.

Case in point: I had a good customer get sucked in by one of these fire sale tire deals and while he got the tires for just over cost, the shop cost the customer about $650 worth of damage to a wheel. A guy like me, how can I compete with lifetime rotation and balance and giving the tires away?

This customer owns a very expensive Subaru sports car and his tires are large expensive items. Its the kind of car that is fun to drive but costs a lot to repair. So this shop down the road replaces his 2 tires and leaves the lug nuts loose on a wheel and my customer drives into my shop with the wheel smoking. I take a quick look and see the lug nuts chewed up, the wheel destroyed, the hub and rotor also chewed up and blued from the heat and the ABS tone ring in pieces.

There is at least $800 worth of parts that this car now needs because of negligence, not including labor. I call the shop and tell them of the disaster, they tell me to send the customer back and they will take care of it.

I'll tell you how they took care of it. They replaced 3 of the 5 lugs so the tire would not fall off. It looks like they glued the tone ring back together and they spray-painted the blued steel with silver paint. A real classic butcher job indeed that will give this industry a big black eye.

So now my customer of 5 years is feeling bad that he was silly enough to risk his expensive auto to save a few dollars and he knows better now. I am disappointed because I lost a good sale to a good customer.

However hard it is to turn down what looks like a super deal just remember: good work is not cheap, good replacement parts are not cheap things cost a heck of a lot of money today. The last thing you really want to do is use your vehicle as a student's learning experience with cheap inferior parts when you are paying the bill. And that's a fact.

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Automan operates an independent auto service center in North Carolina.

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