Public Service Announcement

If you need a good mechanic, my advice is avoid Carroll’s Service Center on Captain Shreve Drive. Why? Consider my experience with them.

Our van needed an oil change and I also thought the breaks might be ready for some work, so I had the wife bring it by Carroll’s. She asked them to change the oil and check the breaks. Here’s where the problems begin.

First, they charged us almost fifty bucks for the oil change, and didn’t even fill up the windshield wiper fluid. O.K., whatever, they aren’t oil change specialists, and maybe their time is worth that much more than places like Express Lube. I wasn’t going to complain, but I’d know better than to bring it to them for oil again.

Second, they told my wife the van needed shoes and pads within the next couple of thousand miles, and quoted her (in writing) a price of almost four hundred dollars for the job. She didn’t think much of the cost, but when I saw it, my first question was “What the crap? Are they gold plated?” You can get pads and shoes at the parts shop for less than $50.00 total. And putting them on shouldn’t take more than an hour. Still, though, I was going to let it slide. If they’re that proud of their work, that’s their business. I’ll just take mine elsewhere.

So, that’s what I decided to do. (Actually, I decided to buy the pads and bring them and the van to a friend’s, where I would sit on a shop stool and keep him company while he changed them.). That leads us to the third problem, the one which caused me to write this post.

We (figuratively speaking) changed out the pads and then removed the rear tire to check the shoes. Guess what? They were, and are, perfectly fine. They’ve got thousands of miles left on them. What did the guy at Carroll’s tell my wife, though? That the pads and shoes needed replacing soon. So not only did they give us an outrageously expensive quote, but the quote included completely unnecessary work.

I can only think of three reasons why he said the shoes were shot, when in fact, they ought to last for tens of thousands of miles. One, he didn’t even bother to check, just figuring that if it needed pads it needed shoes. Two, he checked and decided he’d rather just say we needed new shoes than tell us the condition and let us make up our own minds. Three, he really thought the shoes were shot. I don’t what was going through his mind, but whatever it was, I’ll never again give that shop a dime of my money.

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