So, I came here for an alignment in May. To start, I got a call at 10am to confirm I was coming in…read moreat 2. When I showed up, at 2pm I was then informed their technician called out for the day. Their part time tech wasn't going to be in until about 2:30. (I feel like those are things you should've shared at your 10 AM confirmation call.) I then got a call at 6:15 PM from their part-time technician who was finally looking at my vehicle. He said that my tie rods were not torque to spec, and he wanted to charge me their hourly rate of $169 just to torque them to spec. When I asked him if he meant my inner or my outer because I had just replaced the outer ones. Instead of answering my question simply he started explaining to me what my rods are and what they do (I do most of the repairs on my vehicle at home with my boyfriend, so I know a bit already.) so I asked the guy why he wanted to charge me for something that he was going to have to torque anyways? And he said "well your at home mechanics don't have the tools we have to make sure it's actually torqued correctly." - I have a repair manual. I also own a torque wrench, and knew that I torqued both my inner and outer tire rods to spec, according to the specs in my owners manual for the year, make, model of my car. He then told me I needed my tie rods torqued to 150 foot pounds. (I drive a mid size suv, this would've destroyed my threading.) so I refused to have him do my alignment. When I went to pick up my car, the front desk person asked me why I refused the service, and because he wanted my business, asked if I would reschedule if he could guarantee that I had someone else work on my vehicle. I agree agreed and I came back on May 19th. In between these appointments, i checked my tie rods, I had my neighbor (who was a machinist for Napa auto parts), my family friend who's also got a full garage since he was a mechanic, and my boyfriend looked at them. They were not out of spec at all. in fact when we tried to take it above 97 foot pounds, it would've caused significant damage to the threading for my tie rods.
I'm assuming because these guys at Les Schwab see that I'm a girl, I have my hair and makeup all done and cute, probably means I don't know Jack sh*t about my vehicle, and can squeeze money out of me OR they really are just inexperienced mechanics. It's sad when your customer knows the specs of their vehicle and the professional doesn't? And the professional doesn't even bother looking it up?
When I picked up my car on May 19, the person who was aiding in checking out, let me know that they did a complementary tire rotation. That was very nice of them.
It wasn't until I had put around 500 to 750 miles on my vehicle that I noticed something was very very wrong. They had put my tires back on to where I had two different sizes on each side of my car. The sizes I had when I went into Les Schwab were matched in the front and matched in the back. I have 225/65/17 and 225/60/17. It was only a slight difference, however, having that and driving that around, caused so much vibration to my vehicle that my brand new control arms started coming loose because the rubber bushings became worn out prematurely. My motor mounts also took a hit. It wasn't until the car was becoming unsafe to drive that we finally figured out what was truly wrong with the car after replacing all of those parts. I ended up taking it to another shop where they realized that Les Schwab had taken my tires off and put them on so they were mismatched.
I'm on Monday this week. I called Les Schwab to let them know what had happened. I even preface to the manager, Tony that I was not looking for anything out of them that I just wanted to alert them that that one key detail in putting my tires on caused a major safety issue. Tony's response to that was "well we dont take your tires off for an alignment." (Yeah I know but you do for a rotation.) and then he said " it was probably whatever other mechanic you have working on your car." I know for a fact, I haven't touched my tires, and when I replaced my control arms, I was only taking one tire off at a time (so there's no way that I did that). Tony also retorted with "If I went out there to tell my guys this, they wouldn't know what i was talking out because that was five months ago."
(pretty sure you can just go out there and remind your crew to be attentive and make sure they put tires on in matching pairs.) they truly honestly could've offered to sell me another set of tires, so I had all four matching that day but instead, truly weren't paying attention to what size tires I had.
Anyways, given all of this, I can safely say that these people are not trustworthy, and if they're actually trying to move up in the mechanics world and take their craft seriously, they could've handled the situation a lot better instead of brushing off serious safety concerns