I Hate Mechanics

(Image taken from: picturesof.net)

Mechanics are the scum of the Earth. I'll take a lawyer or a cop over them any day. And you know why? Because I'm MET good cops before. I've met good lawyers. But I've NEVER met a mechanic who wasn't crooked. Never.

This rant is coming after I got my catalytic converter changed at Precision Automotive in Clifton, NJ (Oh, and don't go there, by the way). Now, I expected it to be expensive, but not $865 (!) expensive. Here's how it all went down.

So, I bought a new catalytic converter for about $500 somethin' dollars because I was told that it would be a really great model for my car (It's a 2003 Hyundai Elantra). This is in lieu of buying a cheaper model where more parts would have to be bought down the line. Fine and good, $500 is a lot of money, but I was willing to eat the cost as long as I wouldn't have to bother with more parts down the line. Besides, the woman there who I ordered it with, said that the labor to put it in my car should only come to $100, bringing my total cost up to $600 somethin'.

Yes, that's very expensive, but it's doable. Especially compared to her original figure of $870 just for the part alone.

So, doo, da doo, da doo, we order the part together and she says that they'll call me when the part comes in. But you know what? They don't call me. Ever. For an entire week, I wonder if the part came in or not, and it wasn't until I actually drove down there at the end of the week myself that they told me that, yeah, it had come in, and that they could put it on whenever I wanted. I mean, What. The. Hell? If it came in, then why didn't you call me, ya grease apes? Be considerate!

Anyway, so, I'm the first one there the next day, and the guy tells me that he'll put in the converter and that he'll call me when it's finished. Now, I wasn't born yesterday, even though I may look as handsome as the day that I came out of my mother, so I said that I would stay there so he could put it in right then and there, and he said fine. He disappears behind the glass door to the shop, and I wait.

And wait.

And wait! For about two a half hours before he comes out with not a splotch of oil on him. He tells me that the converter that was ordered for my car won't fit, even though the website that it was ordered from clearly said that it would fit my 2003 Elantra.

(Image taken from: commons.wikimedia.org)

Now, this is after the fact that the woman who runs the shop said that it would fit on just fine, too, and that no parts would have to be added on. Well, the guy working on my car said that that's not true at all and that they'll have to put on another piece that would cost about $300 extra dollars for it to work, which would drag my cost back up in the $800 range. I was livid.

I was all like, You guys messed up. I'm not paying that much. This is your fault. Yada, yada, yada. You know, angry guy shit.

So the guy tells me that he can do something else with the car, and MAKE it fit. And it would only cost me about $135. Of course I said, well, why didn't you just tell me that before? And he said that it was a matter of time and if I wanted to wait that long, he could fix it. I asked him, well, how long are we talking about, and he said about two or three hours.

Of course I didn't want to wait there two or three hours, so I said that I would come back and told the guy to call me when it was all ready (Big mistake, given their track record).

(Image taken from: alcohol-addiction-info.com)

So anyway, I go home and waited some more, getting some writing done in the process. I was supposed to go see my family this weekend, but told my dad that I couldn't because I didn't have a car. I called the shop by the two hour mark and the mechanic said that they had started on my car but it would take another hour or so to get it done.

So I waited some more.

After awhile, it was getting kind of late--around the four hour mark when I left my car--and my dad said, "You better call them back, or they're going to pull some crap and be closed tomorrow and you won't be able to drive to work on Monday." And he was right. I called them up and asked if it was ready, and he said yeah, to which I thought again, you piece of shit grease monkey. be considerate and call!

He told me that I had to rush to the shop(Let me repeat that: that I had to rush to the shop, even though he didn't call me back) because he wanted to leave early and I did rush. I rushed my ass off.

(Image taken from: inmagine.com)

When I got there, the guy came out, finally covered in oil, and told me that putting in the part was a success and that he worked on it for four hours. Four-hours! In the end, changing the part and labor STILL cost me over $800, even though I'm sure that he probably just put the part on when I called, because there's no way that it took him four hours to add the part. No way. I've seen mechanics (friends of mine) put in really difficult parts in other people's cars in under an hour. So there's no way that it took FOUR hours to do what he had to do to my car. Just because the car is in your shop doesn't mean that you're working on it.

Ugh!

So anyway, mechanics are slime and I hate every single one of them. If you can learn one thing in this world to better yourself, it's how to fix your own car. You'll save hundreds. Possibly (Probably?) thousands.