Skip to footer

Top 10 most expensive mistakes in car repair

10. Not comparing shops and price quotes

Business Wire/File
Get several price quotes for major car repair. One nationwide survey found that price quotes varied widely for the same work and that customers were able to reduce the estimated quotes by using online information about 'fair' job estimates.

  • By Ray Cox Contributor

When it comes to a major auto repair, get a second opinion … and a third and fourth. If you are quoted a price that seems high, shop around. Comparing shops and prices can also help you avoid being charged for unnecessary repairs. Before authorizing work, go online to research various repair shops to read reviews, get ratings, etc., and call to get several quotes over the phone. In a nationwide analysis of repair shops by AutoMD.com, mystery shoppers uncovered dramatically different price quotes for the same repair job on the same vehicle. Furthermore, the mystery shoppers were able to shave on average nearly 14 percent from the quoted estimate given by the majority of the shops by countering with online information, such as specific "fair" job estimates based on labor rates and labor hours required, as well as true parts cost. 

– Ray Cox is a senior ASE certified technician with AutoMD.com, an online automotive-repair service owned by US Auto Parts Network.

10 of 10
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.