Beyond Belief...
I am going to play the devil's advocate for a minute.
1. Most shops (around here anyhow) advertise 20-30 or 40 point inspection with an oil change. I know they don't do it, but - if you don't know any better and trust the shop to inspect everything why would you look for trouble?
2. We are car guys. We are in the minority today. If a kid or adult has never had any type of car maintainence training, what do you suppose they do?
3. You ever wait to go to the dr. until "the pain" or whatever got so bad that you had to do something? I expect after you left the dr. had pretty much the same reaction - "if the dumb basterd had come in a month ago we could have fixed him up with medication and that would have done it, now..."
That said, I agree with most of what has been written.
C
I'm going to play devil's advocate going back the other way, as someone who
has been in dealerships, mom and pop's, independants, and chain stores, even ten minute oil change places: yes, most shops do a courtesy check, even the dealerships nowadays. And most
shops will catch something like this well before it gets to this point. I've had to deal with something like this on several occasions and had the customer say to me "well, I've been taking it to Jiffy Lube, Quick Lube, for all my oil changes and they never said anything!"
This puts me, as the service writer, in a situation to 1.) not bad mouth the 10 minute oil change place, as sometimes they have sent me work when they catch it. 2.) explain to the customer that 10 minute oil change places are not in the business of being mechanics. Their primary business is in oil changes, air filters, trans flushes, etc. If they spot something mechanically wrong, the good ones will tell the customer it's there or ignore it because they don't make money in it.
Ultimately, though, no matter what you tell the customer it's
their responsibility as the vehicle owner to get it fixed. What I read in FB's initial post was how could they drive it to the point where the pads were gone and only the caliper was pinching the rotor? How could they not hear the noise of the pad backings grinding for how many miles of metal on metal?