Kael

Jlube's been terrible for many years. A few decades ago, I was a snot-nosed fresh out of college. I took my car over to them for the typical oil change. Car was fine for a few weeks, and suddenly it wouldn't start, as in turn to crank and lights lit but the starter didn't move. Luckily, the car was a manual and a small Mazda, I was able to push start! I only had one car and had to drive to work, so I got pretty damn good at a push start, even started in reverse in the morning.

As typical for us snot-nosed, took a while to start looking for a fix. This mechanic and that, no fix. Many refused to look because it was an import. Think I only got jammed for a replacement ignition switch. Finally took it to an import place and the actual fix pointed right to jlube.

The air filter cover had been opened, when jlube tried to sell me a new air filter. When they closed it, ayep, pinched a wire and the rest is history.

Don't go to them ever, not worth the supposed "savings".

SteveROntario

I used to work at a Q-Lube for perhaps 4 or 5 months before moving on to something else. It was an interesting experience, customers could bring in cars with known damage and try to get us to work on them...you had to watch out as they would be salivating for the opportunity to blame you for the problem and make you fix it after you put your hands on it. Every once in a while a customer would drop their vehicle into the pit and a tow truck would be called to yank it out. Every once in a while you'd leave at the end of the day and see a trail of oil. We had procedures to avoid messing things up but you would see 100 cars a day so things would happen just as anywhere else. Some of the employees were horrible people but 99.9% of the time people got great service.
One time a dealer brought in a nice car for an oil change because the oil was so black and nasty they didn't want any record of servicing it before selling it.

mountainmanjoe

I worked at once of those places for a little while when I was a youngster too. The measure of your success in the company was how much money you drained out of each customer's wallet, whether they needed anything or not. They didn't care about anything else as long as they didn't get sued. They don't actually do half the stuff that's printed on the report. 83-point inspection? Yeah right. Zerks greased? dream on. If you manage to drive out of there without them #$&*$ something up, you're lucky. I've seen them pour fluid on a hot exhaust and start a fire. I was stupid enough to get a transmission pan service done there once. They didn't have my filter in stock, so they stuck in a different one that was a wrong shape. This can cause starvation and completely destroy a transmission ($$$$!)

SteveROntario

Interesting, we wouldn't drop the oil until we had all of the parts and fluids lined up beside the vehicle. If there was a dent in the pan we wouldn't touch the vehicle.
The end of the day report had 2 things on it. How many vehicles were serviced and how much the average bill was above the minimum price. The upsell was for things people needed but it would be cheaper to do it yourself at home. You'd look at the windshield for streaks indicating it needed new wipers, look at the colour of the fluids, etc. They did push really short fluid change intervals and the customers would pull out the manual to show otherwise. That would was pretty debatable as service intervals are much higher now than back then.

mountainmanjoe

I'm talking about the vehicle report given to the customer.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that training consisted of clicking through a powerpoint for a few hours.

Parked

Last update, went back to Jiffy Lube the other day and they refunded my whole oil change bill. Last time I ever go there.