First let me state that I work on cars for a living and have been doing my own mechanical work for 40 years. My 26 year old truck got totaled, so I bought a 15 year old, very well maintained truck to replace it. I took it to Tim's for inspection. The shop where I work uses their towing services and I am friendly with many of their drivers. They call and tell me the truck failed inspection for 6 things and that they could do the repairs for $4,500.00. I was flabbergasted. Three things were very minor, a light bulb out, a loose rear view mirror, and wipers. The wipers were actually fine, but I planned on putting RainX wipers on anyway. But they said all four ball joints were bad. Which I found hard to believe, but okay, I can change those. I found later that the tolerance for the ball joints is 1/2 of a millimeter, so almost any ball joint other than new will likely fail. They said the steering rack and a hose to the power steering cooler was also leaking and needed replacing. I get the truck back and look at the rack and hose and there is some dirt accumulated on the fittings. Wow, dirt under the hood of a 15 year old vehicle, imagine that. I cleaned the areas and they later passed them, with no parts being replaced and not touched by a tool. I changed the ball joints and took it back to them to verify the repairs were made. The manager tells me I need to make an appointment and drop it off. He said they needed to put it on the lift and measure the play in the ball joints even though they were new parts. He said the State Troopers, who run the inspection program, are sticklers and require they be measured. He later denied saying that they needed to measure the play. The inspection was $130 and they wanted another $72.50 for the "re-inspection". I told them I was not informed that there was going to be a charge and told them it was outrageous. They responded that it was because they had to put it on a lift to look at things. I told them they did not have to put it on a lift. They could have verified the repairs were done visually. The girl said she would take $10 off the bill. Which I later found out that $62.50 is the maximum charge. So they tried to bilk me out of more money and made it look they were being nice by dropping the amount. I talked with the manager who insisted that what they saw on the rack qualified as a leak even though no fluid was actively dripping or seeping out of the fitting or hose. I asked them what they would have done had I okayed the repairs over the phone. He admitted they would have put a new rack and hose on the truck. So they would have been putting on parts and charging for labor that were not needed to the tune of about $2,000 for those items and they knew full well they did not need replacement. Stay away from Tim's like the plague.
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