by Jesse Loose

Created on: May 30, 2008

The question of is there such a thing as a trustworthy mechanic is more true than anyone knows. The answer is yes with a capital "BUT". The term ASE certified now more often than not means license to steal than it is a promise of quality service. I am a mechanic of some 30+ years experience and up until I heard the term "I finally got my license to steal", from 9 out of 10 new auto technicians that became ASE certified, I had been looking at the ASE as a necessary evil to maintain at least some level of competence in the mechanics working on vehicles out there. However after hearing that term license to steal from so many new techs I started to talk to the instructors that were training them only to find out that it was being taught as a means to charge the customer for more profitable repairs over and above what is needed to repair the car.

Now I have been repairing cars since the stone age both private and professional certified master in the mid seventies was trained initially by my a mechanic that said if ever he heard of one of his former students ripping off a customer he would personally come and apply a very large open end wrench to the side of their head. Trust me we all believed the man would do exactly what he said because he would return a penny if he knew who lost it. That is the honesty that you need to find. Unfortunately like me that honesty has long since retired or been murdered.
Factory service shops are probably the safest places to go to prevent being ripped off but the large service chains use a method of rotating honest mechanics to the shops that become known for poor service or unneeded repairs keeping them at those shops long enough to build the customer trust back up. As soon as the customer base is built up and the complaints are dropped to what they consider an acceptable level they will rotate the man or woman to another shop in trouble. Even some of the smaller or startup service shops will hire a honest and qualified mechanic to get the business going and gain the trust of the public and then replace him or her with lesser qualified new techs that are cheaper and more than willing to boost profits by over selling repairs.
Now the major chains can get away with this but I have yet to see any of the smaller shops survive this practice. Why they try I can not even imagine but I have personal experience of one shop and have heard from fellow mechanics of several others.
I left the field to be honest because I felt that there was no way

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