Troubleshooter: When it pays to confess your sins

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Taking your vehicle in for service is seldom an event that we look forward to. Even routine maintenance can make us nervous, because we never know what our service consultant might recommend or what it might cost us. We’re often frustrated right at the outset, because of the inconvenience of disrupting our daily routine and losing the use of our vehicle, even if only for a short period of time. Then there’s the embarrassment of thinking we’ve done something wrong, or the fear of a major repair estimate. These last two circumstances can lead to drivers either hiding information or trying to minimize the problem in the false hope that if we ignore something, it will go away.

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Here’s a recent example. A customer calls the service department to find out why their truck won’t start after a cooling system repair was completed by another shop. They state that the engine overheated a bit and their shop couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t restart. It gets towed in and the tech finds coolant stains all over the engine, a water-pump that’s leaking, and a starter that’s inoperative. An estimate is prepared and the customer approves the repair. One new water pump and one starter later, and the engine roars rather weakly to life with a very severe misfire.

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A little more diagnosis, and the tech finds that both cylinder head gaskets failed, most likely from a very severe overheating event. The customer now has a $650.00 bill and a vehicle that still needs much more before it will run well again. They might have made a different decision in the first place if they had known the entire picture. Unfortunately, the tech had no reasonable way of knowing the situation in advance, unless they received all the details from the customer. They later admitted to driving the vehicle with a massive coolant leak until it stalled.

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Experienced service consultants hear these limited-facts stories every day. It could be a ‘hit a small pothole’ that turns out to be major sub-frame damage, or a ‘little noise that just started yesterday’ that turns out to be brake linings that have been riding metal to metal for weeks. First, minimizing your vehicle’s problems isn’t going to make the repairs any easier or cheaper, and in some cases might actually cost you more than if you ‘fessed up’ in the first place. Secondly, you may be inadvertently risking someone’s safety as they road-test your vehicle on public roads, not knowing the risks they’re facing.

If you ask customers why they do this, they will usually reveal they think they might be taken advantage of with inflated repair bills if they provide more accurate details up front. If you’re dealing with a repair shop that you don’t trust enough to tell the complete story to, you’re dealing with the wrong shop. On the other hand, maybe a little education might be in order. The next time your chariot is on your shop’s hoist with some concerns, ask if the tech can point out the problem and how you might avoid some serious expenses in the future.