Questions and Answers
Why Did They Do This?
Q. I told them that I had a oil leak and then they said that if it was bad enough that they wouldn't change my oil, because they didn't want to be held liable. What are they liable of? It was wet so they couldn't tell if it was leaking or not so they didn't even look.
Thank you.
A. It's difficult to answer a question like this. There could be a number of reasons why a shop would want to protect itself in this way. Maybe they did an oil change on a car with an oil leak before and the customer blamed them for the leak. If they had to repair the leak for free, either as a good will gesture or the result of litigation, that would make them more careful in the future. All it takes is one bad experience to make a shop paranoid.
Everyone hears of dishonest mechanics but no one ever hears of dishonest customers. I did an oil change on a car a few years ago. It was a rush job so the Service Manager drove the car on the lift. I did the oil change while the S.M. was standing there and when I was done, he drove the car out. The customer came back a few minutes later and accused me of stealing $300.00 out of his car. Security searched my tool box and then they searched me. I was utterly humiliated and I was innocent. The S.M. verified I was not in the car except to reach in and start the engine. After the police came it was proved that I was not the thief but the money, if it was even there, was never found.
It is incidents like this that make mechanics and shops protect themselves from any possible problems and sometimes it gets carried to an extreme. In a case such as yours, I would have put the car on the lift and made note on the repair order of the leak and have the customer sign it as acknowledgement that the leak was there and we were not the cause of the leak.
Additional Information provided courtesy of ALLDATA
