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Old 10-01-2009, 10:35 PM   #1
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Dang... My shop got a very nasty yet comical poor review on yelp

So before you click on the link take the time to read my side of the story. The customer comes in for our coupon oil change. Strait off the bat she seemed to have a chip on her shoulder. She has a lexus rs300. Not 100 percent sure i tell her let me check the computer really quick i think your car has a canister oil filter which would be a additional charge not covered by the coupon. She replys. What you dont know? You are the mechanic you should know. I respond i am not a robot i dont have every filter for every car memorized.

I look up the filter and sure enough her car does. Our shop stocks almost every screw on filter but not all canisters since we dont do to many of those particular oil change and also it is about 3 times more expensive than the normal screw on type. I tell her hold on a second let me check if we have one in inventory.

Then she finally agrees to sign the paperwork claiming we are so much more expensive than what she is used to paying which is 20 bucks. While we are charging 29 dollars.

So we start to do the oil change and we are doing a tire rotation. The tech gets me while im in the office saying he cant find the wheel lock. I ask him did you check the glove box, arm rest and trunk" he says yes. So i ask the customer if she knows where it is.

She responds are you guys idiots. It is in the trunk like its supose to be by the spare tools. I told her no we are not we already checked there. So i personally go to check myself and its not there. I tell her again i checked its not there. She responds "you guys must be blind". Then goes very irate to her car to look and she cant find it!. I ask her who did the last tire rotation on her car and she tells me firestone. I explain to her that more than likely the last shop forgot to put it back in your vehicle. But we could just perform the normal oil change and you can bring it back when you get the key.

The tech tells me at the end her oil change was 10k miles ago. I talk to her while im billing her out. She says she read online its fine to go 10k miles between oil changes. I told her that is for synthetic oil not regular oil. She then tells me that she also read that there is no difference between synthetic and regular. I start to try to explain to her but then i just stop. And i say okay you can believe what you want to belive and i will believe what i want to belive. Me thinking this lady is just a complete moron. She is stubborn and she wont let anyone tell her that she is wrong.So we finally bill her out. Me and the tech are like whew glad to get her out of our shop.

10 months later. We get a call on my day off. The other service manager answers the phone. She starts screaming saying you guys are so incompitent idiots and so on cursing up a storm. She is saying that she took the car back to firestone for a oil change about 9k miles later. Keep in mind this is regular oil we used on our oil change not syntehtic. And they could not remove the oil filter. They ended up cracking it when they took it off. And they told her it was installed with 150ft pounds of torque!!!! And that spec is 20 foot pounds. Now she was stuck without a car had to special order the part and had to get a rental. Now the shop is blaiming us for this.

Now me being a tech and some of you out there who know a bit about cars know that it is quite impossible to isntall a filter on at 150 foot pounds. Even with all your strength with one hand. Even with 2 hands that would require a breaker bar and using a little bit of body weight into it to put it to that tight.

And even if it was put to 150 foot pounds would that mean it owuld crack the housing installing it?

The tool that we used was a filter cup. And a 3/8th ratchet. Just holding with the base of your hand to tighten it snug. The filter housing is plastic and it is not like a wheel stud and nut that will stretch and allow you to overtighten it. The filter housing once it sits flush will not be allowed to tighten anymore. So the max tightness i could guess could maybe be 30.

What my guess is. And i think its a pretty good guess is the technician didnt have the correct filter cup to remove the canister filter. So he used a large set of channel lock pliers to grip the filter house and turn it loose. In the process he cracked and broke it. Then the service manager not wanting to take blame try to blame it on the previouse shop who worked on her car which happend to be us.

So i call this shop and talk to the manager. He tells me that the technician was having trouble to remove the filter and not wanting to break anything he lets the manager know. Then he says he tried he oculdnt either. Then he states that he takes a 3/8th torque wrench and put it to the filter and went to tighten it and it immediately clicked. Then he infrormed the customer that it might break when they remove it. She said okay and then when they tried to remove it sure enough it broke.

To me something seems kinda fishy in his story. Well what do you guys think? Do you belive the shop and the customer or do you belive what my speculation of events what happend. Well below is the review for you guys to decide.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/indus-auto-sunnyvale-2
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Old 10-01-2009, 10:38 PM   #2
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She has a Lexus ...
DOH!! Red flag No. 1 !! (owns Lexus, but uses oil change coupons?! hmmm)

OK, I'll keep reading


...

.....

Hmmm.. Ok. She's only written 2 bad reviews on Yelp, no positive reviews. Looks like it's as far as it's gonna go since her damages are so small. I wouldn't worry about it.
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:06 PM   #3
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hmm, they seem to be being bumped down by positive reviews!
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:09 PM   #4
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And i say okay you can believe what you want to belive and i will believe what i want to belive.
there is a better way to handle that statement. It once inspired my mother to slam on the breaks and kick me out of the car when i was a teen.

"you believe what you want to believe and i'll believe what is right"

lol the mind thinks its going to be the normal cliche statement where no one is wrong. then bam.. you're still wrong lol..
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:12 PM   #5
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you can email the site that does the reviews and say that the listing was posted by an disgruntled employee that no longer works for you. lol the place work for does that all the time with insider pages lol they will remove everything if you want them to. every 5-6 months we trim out all the nasty ones lol
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:28 PM   #6
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That is kind of funny. I used to work for Firestone and we always tried to blame it on someone else. But 9k miles one one of those canister filter will glue that o-ring in there and make it a complete PITA to remove and since it was the plastic one filter cups don't like to stay on there if you put a little torque. I have broken the filter cups trying to get these loose both the plastic and alum. ones

When I worked a a quick lube right out of high school I tried to get a woman go inside and I was going to pull her car in the bay which was company policy. She insisted on pulling the car in and told her I was only following rules and she was not alloud to pull her car in. She said "The Nazi's were only following rules. I'm not a child I can drive my car into a bay."
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:40 PM   #7
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not trying to start an argument, but toyota themselves states in the 2009 rx350 manual 5k miles OR 6 months period, if you make 6 months without 5k miles you take it in immediately, so she is not following her own car's specifications, so you are no longer liable...

in the future, if you get someone like that, show them the appropriate page of their owners manual...


also, technically, firestone is at fault for breaking it, as they obviously did not have the appropriate toyota SST...

i am in the toyota t-ten program, and pulled this info from TIS
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Old 10-01-2009, 11:41 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by YarisSedan View Post
To me something seems kinda fishy in his story. Well what do you guys think? Do you belive the shop and the customer or do you belive what my speculation of events what happend.
I haven't read the review yet, but to me it sounds like the mechanics are playing nice to both the lady and yourself. Try e-mailing her and let her know what those mechanics told you (that she said it was OK if it cracked) and let's see what happens.
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Old 10-02-2009, 01:28 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silver_echo View Post
not trying to start an argument, but toyota themselves states in the 2009 rx350 manual 5k miles OR 6 months period, if you make 6 months without 5k miles you take it in immediately, so she is not following her own car's specifications, so you are no longer liable...

in the future, if you get someone like that, show them the appropriate page of their owners manual...


also, technically, firestone is at fault for breaking it, as they obviously did not have the appropriate toyota SST...

i am in the toyota t-ten program, and pulled this info from TIS
Yeah there is kinda a common practice in automotive that if the shop who is working on the car damages something they are responsible no matter really what the circumstances are. Like for example if i remove a lugnut and it snaps the stud. Now me a mechanic know the reason it snapped the stud is probally some one (A) either, way overtightend it probally with thier impact gun on number 5. Or (B) put the lugnut in the socket of thier gun and then used the gun to zip it down without first spinning it on by hand a few threads and thus crossthreading the lugnut into place. But yet i am still responsible. Only if you are lucky and can get away with it and the customer is not there. You can call the customer. State that it is not comming out right. And that it may break off. Do i have your authorization to continue. If they say yes. You can call them back again and then say it did broke. Now you can charge the customer and you got away with it. Sound familiar?
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Old 10-02-2009, 03:01 AM   #10
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It doesn't look like your shop or the other one did anything wrong. She was just being an idiot
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Old 10-02-2009, 03:58 AM   #11
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You should have bodyslammed her through the table, and finished her off with the people's elbow.
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Old 06-23-2010, 03:50 PM   #12
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You should have bodyslammed her through the table, and finished her off with the people's elbow.
then hit her with a folding chair and
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Old 06-23-2010, 04:19 PM   #13
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Then the firestone manager comes and smashes you over the head with a folding chair, now its a brawl lol (jk)

As a customer service type of business there are always going to be angry confused customers pointing fingers at you, but you will always have very satisfied customers, lol angry customers and people are entertainment to me now, i deal with it every day at work debt collections. :P
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Old 06-23-2010, 04:28 PM   #14
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Post a reply to her review so that potential costumers can also read about your side of the story and not just go with what she accused you off. Try to keep it brief.
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Old 06-23-2010, 04:39 PM   #15
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^ +1, good answer.

although, it is now 8 months later, lol
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Old 06-23-2010, 06:15 PM   #16
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You won't loose any of the satisfied customers that you already have. Word of mouth is still a better sales tool than the internet. Any potential new customers that choose to go someplace else because they believe everything that they read on the internet (One bad review, Synthetic Oil=Regular Oil, 10K between oil changes is OK), are customers you don’t want anyway.
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Old 06-23-2010, 07:20 PM   #17
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Wow this was a old thread. Somehow her posting just magically dissapeared and never came back.

We did end up getting another stupid review though. Customer came in and asked to change his window regulator and brough his used part he bought from ebay and asked us to put it in. We said okay. He then asked what if the part is wrong. We said once we pull the door panel apart and match it up with the old one if its wrong we would still have to charge him for the labor to put everything back together. That upset him so he went to another shop and end up paying more. So for that he left a bad review. Which to me dosnt make sense since we havent even performed any work on his car yet.

Its like leaving a bad review for resturant that you havent even tried the food yet. "I drove by the resturant and i didnt like the color of the building. I dont think i will ever eat here"
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Old 06-24-2010, 06:53 PM   #18
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even with synthetic toyota recommends a 3-5k oil service interval...depending on engine.

also, if you dont put oil on the o-ring it will glue itself to the other parts...or worse, get cut and you have an oil mess everywhere.

third...i hear that stupid crap all the time about scratches on panels and switches when i hadnt even been on that side of the car...my manager takes care of the BS thankfully or we'd be out of business.
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