Mid-City Auto Service
There are a few things you MUST know about automotive technicians, and the auto repair business in general…
You need to know that there is no “test” a technician must pass before doing work for the public…
No “internship” they must go through…
No “code” of any kind that applies to an automobile service technician’s or shop owner’s ethics…
ALL of the certifications are VOLUNTARY and cost money…
All of the training offered is VOLUNTARY and even more expensive…
There is no mandatory “internship” or mandatory “apprenticeship” a technician must go through and pass before doing work for the public…
There is no law that sets a MINIMUM REQUIREMENT as to the amount of experience you must have AS A TECHNICIAN before opening up a shop…
Anyone can wake up in the morning and decide to work on cars or decide to open up an auto repair shop! Yes ANYONE can…and YES there are some that did just that…
MANY have little or NO training…
MANY have little or no prior experience…
MANY have few or no voluntary certifications…
There are MANY shops that the owner or manager cannot oversee the repair quality because he has NEVER worked on an automobile himself, so he has no clue if his employees are doing the job CORRECTLY, and if you have never worked on a car (the right way) there is NO WAY you can be sure your employees are doing it the RIGHT way…
Just because someone CLAIMS to have worked on cars for years does NOT under ANY circumstances mean they know how to do it the RIGHT WAY…
MANY have absolutely no diagnostic equipment or service information…
There is no such thing as a “license to practice automotive repair” that you can ask to see like there is for most service type or technical fields…all you have is their WORD that they know what they are doing, and MANY are far from honest…
A real-estate agent is REQUIRED to complete training before he can call himself a Realtor…But ANYONE can wake up tomorrow morning and decide to call himself an automotive technician…
We see this DAILY!
Car came in…customer complaint of no power and says that the plugs, coil, wires, filters, regulator and other work done elsewhere totalling about $800 and it’s still not fixed. Right off the bat, just hearing it run, all of us at the shop said, “sounds constipated, plugged converter”…….then just opening the hood for a visual inspection we see a broken oxygen sensor…..which caused an over rich condition which caused a catalyst meltdown plugging the upstream converter on that bank….so, I call the guy and tell him….he claims the converters were tested yesterday and he was told they were fine….knowing from experience of the symptoms and sounds that someone evidently doesn’t know how to TEST it right, we ran our own test….pressure should be zero at idle, and very close to zero at 2000 rpm…..what do YOU think? After pegging the 15psi gauge, it actually blew the hose off of the gauge.
Incompetence is running rampant in the auto industry folks….”He has a racecar”, “He worked at the dealer”, He has done this for a long time” and any other host of asinine “qualifications” we hear are NO LONGER VALID on MODERN automobiles! After spending the money elsewhere, the ACTUAL repair of this vehicle will have cost the guy a FULL 150% MORE than if he’d come here first.
