Dang... My shop got a very nasty yet comical poor review on yelp

[YarisSedan]

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