Car repairs take a back seat with cash-strapped consumers

[Liberal_in_LA]

Car repairs take a back seat with cash-strapped consumers

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1577495
17, 2009 - 10:13am

Rey Caballero saw a customer leave a Mr. Tire auto repair shop recently, despite being told that his car needed new brakes.

A customer left Steven Duckson's Clearview Car Care shop Wednesday with a severely cracked drive belt and two days earlier, another customer left the shop with steel sticking out of her tire, Duckson said.

These customers had one thing in common: an inability to pay for the repairs, Caballero and Duckson said.

The car repair business was considered recession-proof, if you had a good reputation. Not anymore, Duckson said.

As an employee working for other people, Duckson had a lot of work to do. "But as an owner, it's like, 'I hope I make it through this month,'" he said.
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Duckson said he urged a customer to change his severely cracked drive belt even if he had to do it himself, he said.

"When a customer drives off the lot with a drive belt looking that bad, that's when you know people are having financial problems," Duckson said.

[virginia mountainman]

1. Most People are shopping around for cheaper shops..

I know this, my best friend owns a very popular car repair shop.

[kcass1954]

4. My car went to the dealer last week ONLY because it was the 20K mile service.

My husband's mechanic is counting down the days until my warranty expires in April - he knows I'll be back. And this guy's awesome - great work and reasonable prices.

[madmom]

2. My SO pulled a lady out of a ditch (icy roads) the other days he said her tires showed

absolutely no tread. He told her to take it home because it was dangerous on these roads but alas she didn't.

[undeterred]

12. Because she needs to drive it in order to go to work

if she's lucky enough to have a job. Or go grocery shopping or to the doctor. This has been common in poor neighborhoods for years. A mechanic once told me he had people leave his business who had absolutely no capacity to stop their cars. They couldn't afford brakes- they just wanted to have someone look under the car and tell them if the axle was about to break.

[Critters2]

3. What the nation needs is public transportation available to nearly everyone,

like the old inter-urban systems, popular before cars came along. Yet, most reports say Obama's "infratructure stimulus package" focuses on roads and highways, not mass transit. That is a mistake for a whole lot of reasons.

[tech3149]

5. I don't disagree with you in any way

The problem from my POV is that we have had our communities designed for decades to rely on private individual transport. It used to be that the biggest part of the population was urban and the further you got from the urban center, the lower the percentage of the population. With the larger percentage of the population being suburban and exurban, public transport is much harder and costly to implement. Another factor that makes it harder is the division of property usage where residential, commercial, and industrial properties are restricted and divided.

The gentrification of urban communities might help implement the initial change, but the real problem is changing the psyche of the general public. We've been manipulated for too many years to consider our worth by how much we owned and part of that was isolation from our neighbors. When I was a kid I could walk down the road and tell you who lived in every house, where they worked and where the rest of the family lived. Could you do that today? I don't think so, because I know I couldn't.

Where I live now and grew up is a pretty rural area but we had an electric trolley service that ran from all the small communities to the county seat. They now have a bus service to do the same job, but it's nothing like the trolley service. It's too little too late and much more costly than what we had before.

Until we can integrate and centralize our communities to the point that it was in the 30's mass transit is a bust. The alternatives are too expensive to support.

[dysfunctional press]

14. that would be prohibitively expensive and unworkable.

our society and infrastructure is built around personal vehicles. there are MANY MANY places in the country where public transportation would just be unfeasible. the size of the investment that would be needed just doesn't make sense- it would be better to invest the money into developing full-on electric vehicles for personal transportation.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. My neighbor helps at a car repair shop- she said business is picking up

110% increase from last year.


She said that because companies are not buying new fleets they are
repairing what they got. People are maintaing what they have rather
than buying new. A town adjacent to us lost three dealership and
her business has taken up the slack for warranty work.

Maybe its an exception but she's glad she quit her electrical construction
office manager job last year because that company now is running on
a skeleton crew of 5 people as compared to the 39 it use to have.

[Morning Dew]

7. I nearly always leave the auto repair shop without getting the recommended repairs

I've been ripped off too many times by unscrupulous repair shops who think that women are easy marks.

For instance, there was the shop that told me my engine was blown and I'd have to get a new engine for multiple thousands of dollars and they'd be more than happy to get right on it. Fortunately, my car was only two thousand miles beyond warranty. I called the dealership, they towed the car to their shop and discovered that my serpentine belt was broken.

Unless my car is completely dead where it stands, I always get a second opinion.

Maybe not on that tire situation referenced above.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. Suffered major ripoff from Midas years ago. Never forgot it. I'm real careful

about who repairs my car.

[Morning Dew]

9. Mine was Firestone... yep very careful now.

When possible, I have the shop my brother-in-law works at do the work... unfortunately, the shop is a state away and I can't always get it there. They do all my oil changes so they keep an eye on it for me. Thank heaven for brothers in law!

[Vinca]

10. I've been procrastinating about a lousy oil change.

Keeping my fingers crossed when I take it in for inspection next month the brakes are okay.

[undeterred]

11. I need new tires

I was going to get them this weekend, but my last work assignment ended early, leaving me with 2 and a half weeks with no work. There go the tires and a few other things I desperately need. Its that simple.

But the company that laid me off, they're saving money.

[MadHound]

13. What's really sad is that these peoples' decision to forego repairs

Could directly and literally impact their fellow drivers. Leaving the repair shop without new brakes could very well mean a fatal accident further down the road. Riding on bald tires could very well mean the same. And cars that aren't properly maintained and repaired mean cars that pollute more and are more inefficient.

What's also sad is that car corporations have made their products so complicated that the ordinary person can no longer work on them. Just a short while ago, when times were tough people could fix their own cars for just the cost of the part. Now it is almost impossible for people to perform ordinary maintenance, much less repairs.