Yeah the one and ONLY time I took a car to a quicky lube place, it was my Miata. I took it in for an oil change. When I got home, I popped the hood and looked. The oil filter, which is installed sideways on Miatas, still had the layers of dust on it from sitting installed in my car for months!
I called them up and bitched about cheating me. Bring it back in, they said, we’ll do it right. Over my dead body I said – and I’ve never been to a quick lube place again. That little incident lost them LOTS of money.
It also taught me to mark things that I am about to have replaced or rotated. I mark my tires LF, LR, RF, RR with a magic marker when I take them in for rotation. I mark my spark plugs with little dabs of nail polish. I pretty much double-check everything now…but haven’t found another cheat like I did with the Miata.
[In the 80s my dad took his Cutlass in to Aamco to have them look at the tranny. They tuned it up and sent him on his way. A year later, a mechanic asked him when he got the Aamco transmission – he was shocked! He had owned the car since new so he knew it should have a factory transmission. He took Aamco to court and lost – judge was of the opinion the replacement was probably better than the old one. Probably correct since he drove the car to 300K without another transmission issue. 🙂 ]
