Sears Auto Center

10/13/09

This plays lies

by Universal Man at Citysearch

I caught this store telling me a blatant lie about the state of my vehicle. I went to this Sears recently for an oil change and tire rotation and they told me that, upon inspection, they found my transmission fluid to be black and needing replacement. Additionally they told me that my power steering fluid was black, smelled burnt and needed replacement. I replied that this was odd since I had had the car into a Toyota dealer about 5k miles prior and they replaced both the transmission and power steering fluids then. When I told this to the salesman he said "well you better go talk to Toyota."

So, after asking the salesman to document my problem so I could discuss with Toyota, I immediately went out to my car and inspected the fluids myself. The transmission fluid was fine - a clear, red color, as was the power steering fluid - clear and translucent. As extra care to make sure that I was correct in identifying that the fluids were clean, I went and showed them to Tires Plus down the street. Without any explanation of the situation, I simply asked them to tell me if the fluids needed changing and they replied that they looked fine.

Based on this analysis, and revisiting my documentation from Toyota to confirm that they had in fact listed their services from my previous maintenance visit, I went back to Sears to ask them about my issue. It turned out that the mechanic wouldn't come to the front to talk to me, the assistant manager was out on lunch, the main manager was on vacation and they wouldn't provide the district manager's information. Instead I went to the main Sears store and asked for the manager there who informed me that they were technically no long the same company as the auto center despite the shared name. However, he still pointed me in the direction of customer care and he said he would have the store manager call me.

I finally received a call on Saturday afternoon (the problem happened on Thursday). All the manager told me was that their people have a tendency to get a bit rambunctious occasionally and that he would take corrective action to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Use your own judgement, but I'd avoid this place in the future. I'm a early to middle aged male. I can't imagine what they would try to pull on a female or someone elderly.

• Pros: NA