Don't get ripped off by car mechanic

How to avoid being ripped off by car mechanics

By Eric Edwards

The car repair industry has long had the reputation of being fraught with unscrupulous people and practices. Given the complexity and expense of repairing and maintaining a car these days, it is imperative that you get an appropriately trained, ethical mechanic to repair and maintain your automobile. Gone are the days when a good backyard mechanic can diagnose and repair a car with “bubble gum and baling wire”. Today’s automobiles are complex machines with a plethora of high tech, computerized components that can be correctly serviced only by a qualified technician with modern tools and diagnostic computers.
Finding an honest, competent mechanic to diagnose and repair your car can be a mysterious and intimidating proposition. Keeping this in mind, the consumer would do well to read this article and pay heed to the tips and warning it contains. Automobile repairs can of cost thousands of dollars, so it is definitely worth the extra time it takes to do a little homework about your car, it’s problems, and the prospective service providers in your area.

Do your Homework

The very most important thing a person can do to avoid getting ripped off in car repairs, or any repairs for that matter, is to be informed. This means doing a little online legwork to find out more both about the nature of the repair and to the reputation and trustworthiness of a particular dealer or independent repair shop. There are a number of free resources available to you the consumer that will help prevent you from being taken advantage of when your car needs servicing; You can get a good idea of what is wrong 9 and just as importantly what isn’t wrong)before you hit the shop by using the CarMD tool ($99; www.carmd.com). Just plug the hand-held device into your car (every model after 1996 has a standard connection port under the dash) and it reads the car's computer codes. You can then plug it into your computer for a full report of what problem the codes indicate, the most likely fix, and what labor and parts for the repair cost in your area. The report also lists recalls for your vehicle and summaries of technical service bulletins (recall notices are also available at www.nhtsa.gov). Being armed with this information

Taxi Driving in New York

Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet

“…It’s Hooverville, honey, so anyone outside the military-industrial complex is likely to turn up driving for Dover…”

By Mark Jacobson

From the September 22, 1975 issue of New York Magazine.

It has been a year since I drove a cab, but the old garage still looks the same. The generator is still clanging in the corner. The crashed cars are still in the shop. The weirdos are still sweeping the cigarette butts of the cement floor. The friendly old “YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for all front-end accidents” is as comforting as ever. Danny the dispatcher still hasn’t lost any weight. And all the working stiffs are still standing around, grimy and gummy, sweating and regretting, waiting for a cab at shape-up.

Shape-up time at Dover Taxi Garage #2 still happens every afternoon, rain or shine, winter or summer, from two to six. That’s when the night-line drivers stumble into the red-brick garage on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village and wait for the day liners, old-timers with backsides contoured to the crease in the seat of a Checker cab, to bring in the taxis. The day guys are supposed to have the cabs in by four, but if the streets are hopping they cheat a little bit, maybe by two hours. That gives the night liners plenty of time to stand around in the puddles on the floor, inhale the carbon monoxide, and listen to the cab stories.

Cab stories are tales of survived disasters. They are the major source of conversation during shape-up. The flat-tire-with-no-spare-on-Eighth-Avenue-and-135th-Street is a good cab story. The no-brakes-on-the-park-transverse-at-50-miles-an-hour is a good cab story. The stopped-for-a-red-light-with-teen-agers-crawling-on-the-windshield is not too bad. They’re all good cab stories if you live to tell about them. But a year later the cab stories at Dover sound just a little bit more foreboding, not quite so funny. Sometimes they don’t even have happy endings. A year later the mood at shape-up is just a little bit more desperate. They gray faces and burnt-out eyes look just a little bit more worried. And the most popular cab story at Dover these days is the what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? story.

Dover has been called the “hippie garage” ever since the New York

When Is a Taxi Not a Taxi? Uber fights to change Taxi industry perception forever

When Is a Taxi Not a Taxi?

The new car service company Uber exposes the idiocy of American cities’ cab regulations.

Uber is a company that’s exciting, innovative, useful, and arguably shouldn’t exist at all. It is a solution to a ridiculous problem created by cartels and overregulation.

“I wanted to be able to press a button and get a classy ride,” explained CEO Travis Kalanick when I asked him to describe Uber’s origin story to me at a launch event for its D.C. branch on Wednesday. So last year Kalanick, Oscar Salazar, and Garrett Camp founded a company originally known as UberCab in San Francisco.

The original name made perfect sense, since at root what Uber provides is a taxi service. Just about every major city in America has, in addition to its heavily regulated cab drivers, a largish fleet of private sedan drivers who do things like take businessmen on pre-arranged drives to and from airports. These limo services generally feature nicer cars, higher prices, and—crucially—different moments of peak demand. Car services get a lot of business weekday mornings, and to a lesser extent in the afternoon rush hour. But very few business travelers need a ride from the airport late on a Friday or Saturday night, which is the time lots of drunk young people want a ride home or maybe to a different bar.

These are two fairly distinct market segments. Airplanes take off and land at defined.........

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P.s.

Warning to Uber and Lyft drivers

"Uber Destroyed My Life

I was looking for a way to generate some extra income to supplement my veteran pension, give me something to do with my spare time, and most importantly help make the $409/month payments on my 2013 Chrysler 300. I saw an ad from Uber guaranteeing a very lucrative job as well as great working conditions and a secure future. I hired on as an Uber driver and at first everything they claimed seemed to be mostly true. I was earning decent money (though not as much as their ads promised) and was getting plenty of work. All was good until one day I became involved in an accident. It was only then that I discovered that my personal liability insurance did not cover me because my car was being used for commercial purposes. Uber’s mythical “1 million dollar liability coverage” only covered Uber, not me or my car. I am now being sued by the other driver’s insurance company for thousands of dollars and my smashed Chrysler 300 sits in a junk yard racking up storage fees. On top of all of this, no traditional taxi companies will touch me now because of the accident on my driving record.
I was only trying to earn an honest extra income and now I have no car, just the $409/month payments and a huge pending lawsuit. None of this would have happened if I had been working for a legitimate taxi company that is required by law to provide both a car and commercial insurance for their drivers. If only I had known then what I know now. Uber is a lying, dishonest company that does not give a damn about their drivers and is only out to make a dishonest buck.DO NOT WORK FOR UBER OR THIS MAY HAPPEN TO YOU LIKE IT DID TO ME! "

Talk to your taxi driver

There isn’t anyone who is going to tell you it's time to grow up. Well, there is, but you probably won’t listen to them. I don’t mean growing up in the way of paying your bills, or moving out of your parents' house, or buying your own car. I mean growing up in the sense of knowing who you are, understanding your values and being true to your core.

There is a moment in life when you know it's time to make a change. I call it your “happiness GPS” pointing you in the right direction. Something inside you is telling you, “This is not the right way,” and sometimes, if you continue to go in the wrong direction, the universe will send you a big wake up call. This is what happened to me.

I went to college to be a teacher and entered a five-year bachelor's/master's program when I was 20 years old. Anyone who thinks they know who they are when they are 20 years old is horribly mistaken. When I was 20, I was convinced I was going to be married by 23, have children at 26, and be happily settled with my husband in the suburbs. But my “happiness GPS” had other plans for me.........

A Cab Driver's Challenge To Get Healthy Changed My Life >> Read More