Southern California → Local Jiffy Lubes Caught Ripping Off Customers

No, much like everyone else in the world, he lives for my intervention and opinions.

My Uncle is the former owner of Redline Porche in Santa Monica. He used to have a sign something to the effect that if you tried fixing it first and failed, it would be $125/hour as opposed to the standard $85/hour rate.

I have the Jiffy Lube story to beat all Jiffy Lube stories.

Richie (my husband) had two gigs up in the Bay Area. We decided "cool, it's time for a road trip" and we went around to Jiffy Lube for a quick oil change to get ready.

Halfway up the 5 the car's engine started to rev strangely. The shifter went limp. We coasted the car to the shoulder, and then restarted the car and tried to drive off. It was as if the car was perpetually in neutral. Dead tranny.

The mechanic who worked on the car said that there was a significant amount of motor oil in the transmission fluid. He asked us "did you get the oil changed recently?" We said "Yeah, we did it just before we left." "Where did you get it done?" "Jiffy Lube." He scrunched up his face. "Never, EVER, take your car to Jiffy Lube again. They hire morons."

It was his belief, although he couldn't prove it, that the person who did the oil change and topped off the fluids topped the tranny fluid off with oil by mistake. The result? a $1750 repair bill. :P

MsGeek wins the Jiffy Lube Consumer Ripoff Award.

I think she deserves it. I can't think of anything that can top that.

A snail mail nastigram addressed via certified letter to the CEO at corporate would have worked wonders, particularly if you outlined your inclination to complain to the State AG's office about fraudulent business practices and other breach of contract fun.

Manny moe or Jack?

Wanna make a bet. This isn't a Jiffy Lube horror story per se, however it does involve an oil filter change from a Jiffy Lube-like establishment in an undisclosed location back east. Let's just say that in 1998, I took my vehicle for a simple oil filter change. They gave me the car back and I got apx 10 FT before the car made a horrible, mechanical "coughing" sound and died on the spot.

I walked back to the garage to tell them about it and there I found 3 grease monkey morons pointing fingers at each other as to whose fault it was that had the car last. It was like a lost episode of the 3 Stooges. You see, they changed the oil, alright. But when they gave me the car back they never refilled the oil. Wait, it gets better.

After an ensuing litany of profanity and legal threats from yours truly, they proposed to give me their broken down, 14 FT U-Haul truck to drive around in until they "fixed" my vehicle.

In the end, I had their corporate HQ pay for a rental for me for the 4 months my car had to be at the dealership waiting for the check to buy the new motor I made them buy and pay for the labor to install into my vehicle. At the time, the vehicle had apx 80k miles on it. I still have that same vehicle today and it's running stronger than ever.

Since everyone seems to have a horror story about Pep Boys and Jiffy Lube, the best course of action to take is to file a complaint with the Office of the Attorney General's Consumer Affairs Division. If enough people were sufficiently motivated to file complaints about fraudulent business activities, then we all wouldn't be sitting around on this thread bitching about it b/c the AG would bitchslap sanction the unscrupulous corps perpetrating the activities in question.

Educate yourselves and take appropriate action here:
»ag.ca.gov/consumers/general.htm