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Dave the owner of the shop personally gave me a call this morning when he heard about my experience. He appologized for my experience and said this is not what his business is about and spoke with the technician that originally diagnosed my car to clear up proper procedures. He offered to give my $99 diagnosis fee back and offered to do the work that needed to be done at a reasonable price. I said my friend was working on it and he said if he can't get it fixed bring it down and he will get his top technician on it and will diagnose it for free, so I appreciate that. We came to an agreement that the price for the parts was acceptable although you can get them online for cheaper, which is always the case, they get their parts from napa at $65 and they do have mark them up a little which I understand. He did say the fix should have been one ignition coil being changed instead of all 6 and that the estimate for labor was high as the book said it should take 2.6 hours of labor. It makes me feel good that the owner of the shop is keeping an eye on his business and doing right by the community. ***End Update***
went to dave's car care via a local car call in radio show recommendation, they are trying to charge me $100 to diagnose a problem with my car. They then tried to charge me $1,100 to change spark plugs and ignition coils on a 2004 mazda mpv after they weren't able to positively diagnose an issue with the car jolting/jittering. they said this will most likely fix the problem. they tried to tell me ignition coils cost $80 each a quick search and they go for average $40 each, lead me to suspect they were charging me about double for what really needs to be done. I started to do some research and that dreaded intake manifold they have to take off to access the plugs and coils takes about 2 minutes to remove not 4 hours. Still searching for an honest machanic.
So I went in there to get my car back after I declined their service, they charged me $99 for the diagnosis. I asked do I still have to pay if they weren't able to fully diagnose the issue and tell me for sure what the problem was. the lady at the front sat there silent for a second and the mechanic came up and said well we are charging you for the time I took to look at your car. Yeah but you weren't even able to tell me for sure what was wrong with it. mechanic said well i hooked it up to the machines and no error codes were coming up and the spark plugs and ignition coils will fix it. I said I looked online and the ignition coils aren't $80 they are $40, he said well thats the price if you go to the store and buy them yourself and fix it in your driveway. I said well that's what I'm going to do and walked out.
It's crazy to think $500 for parts when in reality it should be about $250 and then another $600 for labor on something that should only take 2 hours max. they try to claim they have to take off the intake manifold which they do but I also looked that up on a forum with pictures and it's a few bolts, the guys on the forums said how the dealerships and car shops will claim this is a big deal but the guy on the forum did the entire job in 2 hours without having any guides.
when i first called the guy he said he pulled a few spark plugs that were easy to access and he couldn't determine which one it was so he said many one was bad or they all were along with the coils misfiring randomly, he didn't know but was sure I should replace them all and wanted to charge me a huge amount of work.
no special tools were needed, no lift for a standard mainteance job. I know someone who works on cars on the side and he's charging me $35 an hour to fix it and he says well let me start with the spark plugs first (the easier cheaper fix) and see if that will fix it. That's called honesty and trying to save someone a few dollars.
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