Help me before I take my car in . . .
This is a very bad idea. You see it makes no sense to tell the shop what to do or tell them, "The guy on the web said . . .". The recipe for success is simple. Give them the symptoms, write down what you see, you hear, you feel, you smell and make sure they know you expect them to diagnose it correctly. If you tell them what to do, or what to fix, if you are wrong, they are NOT going to refund you a dime and they shouldn't.
Here's my favorite story. Wife brings in a red T-Bird. Tells the service writer her husband said to tune it up and align the front end. Service writer asked for symptoms, asked to know what they knew, asked why and wife said "Because my husband said". Estimate given $135, and accepted.
Car delivered Tuesday, hubby back Wednesday morning with underwear all wadded up. He is
yelling and demanding to see the owner.
"I paid you $135 to fix my car and I still have the same problems"
I
said, "No, you paid us to perform 2 tasks, to do specific work. We never knew what you knew,
we were never told about any problems."
Hubby said he still had a vibration and the car still surged. A test drive with Hubby showed a bad
rear tire and the engine was surging because the A/C was low on freon and the A/C compressor was cycling on and off causing a surge.
I
said, you diagnosed these two problems yourself and you were wrong. You should have just told us about the vibration and the surge and told us to find and bid the repair. You didn't. I'm not going to refund you a dime, because I'm not going to pay for your mistake. Heck I pay for enough of those myself, without paying for yours too.
The moral? GIVE THEM THE SYMPTOMS, NEVER, NEVER TELL THEM WHAT TO FIX.
Before you ask about an intermittent problem >
