My mom was having problems with her car not starting. I looked at all of the possible symtoms, for instance, I checked the battery, alternator, and also if there was power in the car. We even tried to charge the battery, but the car didn’t turn on, so the obvious victim was the starter. My mom made a trip to the local mechanic shop and told them of the possible problem. They quoted her $189.36 for the starter and $66.00 for labor with a grand total of $270.98. I thought to myself that the quote was reasonable, however, I told her let me check autozone to see how much the starter cost. I looked online (autozone website) for a 1999 Nissan Sentra 1.6L DOHC starter and found one for $87.96 with the core (the shitty starter already on the car) or pay $132.96 without trading in your old starter. Both of the options would give you a lifetime warranty, so if anything happened to the new starter you can go back and get another one for free. So I calculated the amount for the starter if we bought it on our own and the labor to be $155.36. As you would expect we didn’t take her car to the mechanic who quoted her the first price and took it to someone else with a starter we bought at autozone. So when it was all said and done she saved over $100 bucks and the piece of mind of that her car was fixed properly.

Why does this matter to you?

Well people get ripped off like this all the time and simply take whatever the mechanic says and puts full trust in them. I am all about making money, but it sucks to take advantage of people who don’t know anything about automobiles. It seems that most mechanics only think about the front end, meaning that they care about the first encounter or purchase with the customer. However, there is more money to be made if the person was totally honest from the beginning because the customer will continuously come back because of the great work performed and honesty given from the mechanic. I think most mechanics only worry about the now and not about the later and sadly to say nothing is ever done enough to help people watch out for signs and shaddy things that happen. I think I am going to see if I can solve this problem some how some way.