express oil change rip off customers treat employees poorly madison, Alabama
i used to work there and they do not care about there employees at all all they care about is appearance and making the shop look good. you get ripped off all customers that go there are getting RIPPED OFF the dealership does not even charge as much to do the work they do up there. do your research get a quote from there and take your car to the dealership and get a quote for the same exact service guaranteed it will be cheaper. bottom line do not take your car there unless you want to get ripped off and get low grade parts from auto zone installed on your car with a 300% mark up on parts PLUS $80 per hour labor charges half of the brake work i done there cam back within 6 months with shaking or squealing from the poor quality brake rotors and pads that we put on vehicles and charged over dealer price for .
thats dealership prices with shade tree quality work and miscellaneous shop fees. half the "mechanics" that work there are not ASE certified when they advertise the mechanics are certified installing the auto zone brakes on your car for $300 or more!. the upper management threatens to fire anyone over the slightest mishap that goes on so the employees are on constant worry about being terminated for making a honest mistake no matter how minor it is. now lets get to the oil change part itself.. $45 bucks for a basic oil change with bulk oil does that seem just a tad bit high priced?? yes it is. but they insist that its a fair price for the service that you are receiving by washing your front window with dirty soapy water and spraying your doors with oil and grease everytime you get your oil changed..
cars these days do not need the doors sprayed every 3 months.. they preach to the employees about not upselling anything to the customer that they do not need but yet if we do not meet our weekly target they chew us out and magically everyone is trying to sell air filters or transmission services that next week... they have categories that each store has to meet and if lets say they are down on fuel filters this week then every customer that comes in magically needs a fuel filter that week and try to sell them that service if not throwing the whole book at them if its a elder person or a female. also they say they lube the chassis and check the differential fluid maybe 4 cars out of 80 get that done that come in each day just depends if the manager is in "the pit" or not. $35 bucks for some $10 wiper blades? come on!!
i hated every part of working at that place i do not like to rip people off and certainly do not feel like its fair to the customers that they do not know the inside details. i am fortunate enough to have got myself a much better job where i do not feel like my work "owns" me and having to worry about being terminated everyday i come in. this is just some information i just wanted to pass along to the general public yes its a "10 minute" oil change but is $45 worth it to you? also dont let me forget about the upselling of premium oil the "max life" oil that does absolutely nothing for your engine it does not whatsoever stop oil leaks or oil consumption at all its all a joke and waste of extra $15 bucks all that stuff does is gunk up your engine over time. the $80 synthetic oil change thats even worse!!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
91preludesi
Macon,Georgia,
U.S.A.
I've seen it too!
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Sat, October 15, 2011
I used to work for an Express Oil Change & Service Center (not this location). I was a mechanic and I've seen the outrageous prices. I also saw several brake jobs come in and the lead mechanic told me that the brakes were just done 6-8 months ago. Now they need brakes again. Nobody goes through brakes that fast. I've seen first hand the parts that go on and it's always the cheapest bidder wins. If O'Reilly's has something for $60, Autozone has it for $58 and Advanced Auto Parts has it for $35, you're getting the $35 part put on. It doesn't matter how cheap the quality is. As far as the repair cost, from what I've seen at the one I worked at the labor was straight from Alldata. Granted if a job called for 0.8 hours to complete it would have been bumped up to an hour. That happens pretty much everywhere. On the other hand, where the customers get gouged at is on the parts. I've never seen such high mark-ups. All shops have a mark-up on parts. If they didn't they wouldn't be in business, but I've never seen mark-ups so high! Where I was the mark-up was 2.5. So a part that cost the shop $35 would cost the customer $87.50. That's extreme! Every other shop that I worked at the mark-up was around 0.45. There the $35 (shop cost) part would cost the customer $50.75. That's more reasonable. That's $36.75 extra they're making just for having a part delivered to the shop! They don't even have to go get it, it's not like they need gas money! That's a small price. Think about it when the part costs the shop $150. Customer cost is $375! It's no joke that you can have it done at the dealership cheaper...and with OEM (factory) parts!
When customers said something about the price being high they told them that they would, "See what they could do for them, they had a little wiggle room in the estimate". Of course they had wiggle room, the job was way overpriced from the get-go. They probably could shave off $75 or more and still make a good profit. Every business is in business to make money, but gouging people like this is just wrong! We're in a tough economy too. People need all the help they can get. They don't need to be robbed blind like this.