After being screwed by Crater Lake Ford in Medford Oregon, where I was charged for work that wasn't performed on my Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Expedition. Apparently I had blown out spark plug #7, which I was told was due to a poor design in the engine. I told them to go through all of the other places where the spark plugs screw in to see if they needed bored out and put a new sleeve in to ensure that none of the other spark plugs would do the same thing. I also asked them to replace all of the spark plugs. They told me they replaced all of the spark plugs (and charged me for it), and said that everything looked perfectly fine. I had been charged almost $500...only to break down a week later with another blown out spark plug.
This time, on a Saturday, I took the vehicle to Mock Ford in Grants Pass Oregon. I was told by Shawn in the service department that Crater Lake Ford didn't have a very good reputation. He told me that they would go through all of them, bore each one out, put in a new sleeve, and replace all of the spark plugs. He said that it would cost about $400, but could be as much as $600 if they had to replace some or all of the coils and "spider wire" - not sure what that is and neither did anyone else there. The following Monday I received a call from "Justin". He asked me questions about the vehicle and told me that they were going to be going through the vehicle. A short while later he called me back, and after rambling on for quite some time and talking in circles to try to get me confused (which didn't work - I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box when it comes to vehicles, although I've rebuilt an engine before, so I know some about engines, I've own a very successful business for almost 25 years and have 4 bachelor degrees, 3 masters degrees and am currently working on 2 doctorate degrees), he ended up telling me that they would need to fix the hole that spark plug #2 goes into, and that they hadn't looked at any of the others yet, but so far I was looking at $800 and wanted me to authorize the work.
I ended up talking to a friend of mine who owns 3 of Medford's largest businesses, and he told me to take the vehicle to someone that for many many years have been taking all of their personal vehicles to as well as their entire fleet of business vehicles. I talked to the owner of that business and he said that he could do exactly what Mock Ford orginally said they were going to do (bore out every spark plug hole, put in a new sleeve, and replace all of the spark plugs for $400-$450. He said that it would take about 3-4 hours to do all of them. He also warned me about taking vehicles to dealerships, because they "prey" on people like a lion hunting a wounded animal, charging them outrageous amounts of money for the work that they do, and probably some for work that doesn't need to be done and that they don't do. Check - been there and had that happen to me several times.
But wait...the story gets better. I drove the vehicle about 5 miles to Mock Ford. It was running a little rough at times and a little bit loud - after all, I had blown a spark plug, but when I went to go pick the vehicle up and after I paid them for the "diagnotic fee", when I got in the vehicle, there was a couple of dirty, greasy parts directly sitting on my center console. One was the blown out spark plug, and the other was a coil, wihch looked like it had been cut off with a knife or a pair of scissors, and now was getting dirty, greasy nastiness all over my vehicle. The best part came when I tried to start it up and it wouldn't even idle. When I put it in gear and gave it some gas, it made a horrific noise and it wouldn't even go. At that point I went in and talked to Justin and the mechanic who worked on it and neither one of them knew why it was like that. The mechanic then changed his story and started telling me that it was like that when he tried to drive it into the shop. Like I said, I drove it 5 miles over there and even though it ran a little rough at intervals, it had plenty of power to get it there. Needless to say, I had to pay $125 to get it towed over to the other shop.
The moral of the story is that you DO NOT want to do business with Mock Ford in Grants Pass Oregon. Gene Mock is the General Manager there, and Donald Mock is the Service Manager. I'm sure they're making "friends" and their families proud to operate a business like that with no morals, values, or business ethics. How do you sleep at night?