Anyone have any horror stories about having your oil changed at a Jiffy Lube type oil change place?

In for horror stories

and also, Nightflyer thread

My roommate in college got his older S-10 oil changed on the West side of the state before coming to my place on the East side of the state to visit.  Motor seized in Flint.  Don't remember if he got paid or not.

Used Jiffy Lube or Valvoline off and on over the years… never had a problem until recently but that was because their prices have exploded…went back to my Ford dealer and saved $40-$50 last oil change.

They left the oil filter strap/wrench in my engine compartment.

So I got a filter wrench 'for free'.

Does that count as a 'horror story'?

One I used could never put the air filter cover back together correctly on one car I had. I asked them to stop checking it after a few times because of it and one of the clips being lost once.

Local branded place left the dip stick out of stepdaughter's car once and it lost oil and made a small mess. Stick was laying in groove at one side fender.

One place used different weight oil than listed on the car and said there was an update when I questioned it. I replied they stated what weight they were going to put in and that is not what is in there. They offered to replace it.

At one place I watched them through the window change the front headlight lamp out on a guy's truck once while doing the oil change and they reinstalled it incorrectly. When I was paying they asked me something like is there anything else they could do for me and I told them yes fix that headlight on that truck you put the lamp in because you reinstalled the housing incorrectly.

Company truck was dumping oil when the driver stopped for gas. Oil filter was loose. The other extreme was my son bought a used Honda and the filter and drain plug were so tight I had to use a cheater pipe on the wrenches to loosen them.

Cannot say it was a horror story but they did forget to put my oil cap back on. A few days after I left I opened the hood and saw oil dots on the underside of the hood.  

Son's friend went to Jiffy Lube because he had a coupon. They forgot to put oil in. He ended up with a new motor.

My brother took his accord to a local place that my mom liked because they were "nice" to her and sent coupons. They changed calipers and pads and forgot to close the bleeder valve on the caliper. Mom drove home, I followed. When we got back she said the brake pedal had to go to the floor to stop so I took it around the neighborhood, pedal to the floor and the car stopped if it felt like it. I thought it was just air in the lines so we drove it back, stupidly, and I just told the guy there was something wrong with the pedal feel. He hims and haws and says they just need to break in, we insist he tests it for himself. Comes back in and immediately starts trying to cover his tracks and insinuated we did something. Bleeder cap was sitting in the parking lot, just handed to him and told him to fix it and we would not be paying.

Second one, had a local place install new calipers/rotors on my personal car. They reinstalled the rear brake lines in a way that they were over the rear axle, which was rubbing against them. Fortunately they were braided stainless lines or I probably would not have made it home. Only caught it because I had an inspection done at another local "expert" shop that found it. To the first shops credit they ordered and installed four new braided stainless lines from Bimmerworld.

Thread is for Jiffy Lube horror stories, I have plenty from a local Merc dealer, too. Scum.

That being said, I have used a local Tire Discounters and they have been excellent. Let me bring my own parts and labor is reasonable.

When I replaced my wife's air filter I found a cigar cutter in the housing. I'm just going to assume that was Jiffy Lube.

The Jiffy Lube near my shop has a car fire at least once a year it seems.

One place my ex took her car to didn't get the gasket off from the old oil filter before installing the new one. The next day when I went to leave for work I found a big puddle of oil, had to get it towed on their dime.

Come for the oil change.
Stay for the $100 cabin filter.

One gave my dad 8-10 quarts in a 4 cyl ford ranger. Truck would not go over 45mph, he checked oil, filled WAY over max.

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Is it normal to have your first homosexual experience at a Jiffy Lube, or is it just me?

I get their customers cars in every once in a while. I either am replacing the oil pan or installing a timesert after they fuck up their car.

I’ve been to jiffy lube 3-4 times never had a bad experience, a fraternity brother at the time was manager so it was cheap

I took a Toyota Celica GT there back in the 90's and then found oil leaks on my garage floor the next day.  Took it back to them and they claimed I had a "huge rock ding" or something in my oil pan, and needed a whole new pan as it was causing the leak.  Funny, it didn't leak BEFORE I went to Rippy Lube.  I took it to the Toyota dealer down the block and they checked it out, and said yes, it had a dent in it but it wasn't causing a leak.  They had to dump the oil and did another change but it never leaked again.  That was the last time I went to JL.  

Plus, the local news did a story on the JL's in town not long after and sent a female reporter with a small camera in her bag to get an oil change.  JL's employee came in to the waiting room and told her she needed a new air filter and showed her a dirty one.  She paid for it all and then pulled the window sticker and went to another JL, where she was told by an employee holding a dirty air filter that she needed a new filter.  Made me wonder how many people that never checked their filters or anything got screwed by them.

I used to run a quick lube. Goofy Lube was a frequent source of new customers.

Let's see, just off the top of my head:
1. At one point Honda decided aluminum oil pans, steel drain plugs and aluminum drain plug gaskets were a good mixture. Goofy Lube pit tech couldn't get the drain plug to stop dribbling so he torqued the shit out of the plug. Destroyed the threads in the oil pan. Owner was super nervous about getting oil changes but came to our shop because we used vacuum powered suction through the dipstick tube to drain Hondas because of that issue with the pan/gasket/plug. We never damaged a Honda oil pan that way.
2. Goofy Lube pit tech failed to put GL5 in the rear diff of a Chebby pickup. Destroyed the rear end but that caused the driver to crash. Driver died.
3. Goofy Lube tech (assume it was the hood/topside tech) didn't check the oil filter gasket on a late 80's Maxima. Filter is really painful and difficult to reach on a hot motor and is impossible to see. Really easy to double gasket the filter so you MUST check the old one visually and feel test the mounting surface. As soon as the driver went to merge onto the freeway the double gasket situation popped and it hosed oil onto the exhaust pipe which was apparently hot enough to catch fire. Carbeque was a total loss. Driver put it into the wall and then escaped with minor injuries.
4. Goofy Lube tech put the wrong filter on. Owner specified HP1 instead of PH8A. Engine was custom built dry sump motor with external oil pump and it made super high oil pressure. Tech used a PH8A because "meh, it's the same thing". It held just long enough for the guy to get on the throttle hard then it popped and then it pumped every bit of oil out of the engine trashing a ridiculously expensive custom engine. Owner didn't know about zero oil pressure until it too late because the oil pressure sending unit was on the other side of the oiling system to the filter.
5. A Jaguar dealership overtorqued the drain plug on a R spec Jag. It pulled into my shop and I promptly removed the drain plug. It came out with the oil pan threads still in the plug. I had to cut a universal drain plug to fit without hitting the crank just to get oil in it (driver refused to call a tow truck, insisted on driving 2 blocks to the Jag dealer). So I spelled "not so tight dumbass" on the oil pan with torque-seal (kind of a paint we used to detect a particular kind of repair fraud) filled it with oil, had the owner sign an acknowledgement of non-liability and an acknowledgement of prior damage and sent him on his way. Not a Goofy Lube story but GL isn't the only place to find shitty lube techs in the wild.

In stupid owner stories, there are many many more just dumb motherfuckers in the general populace than can be accounted for by Goofy Lube employees and dealership lube techs:

1. One day a guy with a mid-80's Hyunday pulls in and the car is absolutely made out of significant oil leaks and grime. I told the owner I couldn't service his vehicle because as soon as I change the oil the detergents in the new oil would dissolve much of the grime that was keeping the oil it had in it inside the engine and it would end up a warranty claim and I wasn't down to do that. He buys oil fro us and pulls out. Then IN OUR PARKING LOT he pops the hood, drops in 3 quarts of oil and leaves the car running while he runs over to toss out the oil bottles. The rear main seal appears to have been made out of sludge because before he got back to the car the RMS gave up and it started pouring oil out wholesale.
2. Guy with a BEATER of a pickup which is leaking like the Hyundai above pulls in and I refuse service so he leaves and eventually changes his own oil. Then he files a warranty claim saying we did something wrong while changing his oil and his engine subsequently seized. I got to go to small claims court for that one. I get asked by the judge what services we performed. I said, "None. I refused service due to the condition of his vehicle." then I produced the form I filled out at the time which recorded that we'd refused service and put the vehicle into our corporate computer system under a "do not service" flag and one of our people from corporate produced a report which showed what date that vehicle was added to the DNS (do not service) list, what store it was added from, what employee added the car to the list and all kinds of other data. We won.
3. Guy with a real chip on his shoulder pulls in and won't let the lube techs do their spiel. Says oil and filter only and don't check the fluids or clean the windows. Then the guy is a real dick to the techs while they quickly work to finish up his car. Hood tech notices the oil on the dipstick looks like a chocolate milkshake and goes to inform the owner that we can't change his oil because he evidently has a blown head gasket and it would be a waste of time to change the oil now. Guy tries dismissing the hood tech rudely telling him to just change the damned oil or the guy we get the hoodie fired. Hoodie ain't having it so he fiddles around the engine bay for a few minutes and then asks the guy to start the engine. Guy starts the engine. Hoodie tells him to pull forward so guy pulls forward. Car is now out of the bay. Hoodie says (basically), "Have a nice day sir." and waves him off. Guy stops and, confused, asks for the bill. Hoodie politely informs him that there's no charge because we didn't do anything. Guy tries flapping his gums and the hoodie stops him and says, (paraphrasing as it's been a couple decades) "I told you we were not going to service your car. We did not service your car and it'll be entered into our do not service list in a few minutes and we'll never service it again after that. Now, have a blessed day." Hoodie was terrified that I'd write him up for that. I didn't. I gave him a $1/hr raise on the spot and eventually made him into a floor supervisor which is kind of like an assistant-assistant manager.

There's always 2 sides to every car repair horror story. Where Goofy Lube is involved, I've come to expect that one side will be, "Goofy Lube fucked up my..." and the other side will be, "Yeah, we fucked that car up good."

I had a customer come in with a '05ish Chevy pickup for an oil change. Pulled the dipstick for the pre service check.

That generation of Chevy pickup takes 6 quarts of oil. They have a 2 piece dipstick. The two halves of the dipstick are riveted together 6 or 8 inches above the full line.


The oil level was 4 inches above the rivets.

Had a buddy take his Maserati Quattraporte to jiffy lube for a wheel alignment."because they have the good Hunter 4wheel alignment machine"

He got to watch while their barely literate employee drove into someone's truck and totalled it.

The best bit - within 20miles of him is a place that does nothing except wheel alignments on sports cars.

A co-worker with a 2007 Corvette Z06 went to Jiffy Lube for an oil change.

The 2007 Corvette Z06 LS7 engine utilizes a dry sump oiling system. A drain in the engine oil pan holds a small amount of residual engine oil. The dry sump reservoir on the passenger side fender that holds the majority of the oil.

The clueless, stupid, brain dead, low-rent moron at Jiffy Lube drained the small pan under the engine, and then proceeded to fill the prescribed amount of oil into the engine.

The owner told me that on startup the Corvette oozed oil from everywhere, struggled to run or idle... a real cluster fuck sponsored by Jiffy Lube.

He yelled out in the bay telling the idiot to shut if off. The 20-year old pimple-faced manager came out and looked over the debacle standing before him.

In the end Jiffy Lube drained all of the oil and refilled it correctly, and agreed to cover the costs for the engine bay to be cleaned and detailed.

My friend took it to the Chevrolet Dealer to have it checked for any engine damage resulting from the stupidity.

I am still amazed that he took that beautiful Corvette to a shit-show like Jiffy Lube.

One of my techs, an ooooold North Korean guy (we'll call him Hank) that couldn't to follow directions had a disagreement with the pit tech and the pit tech then told Hank to drain the car himself. Hank said, "Clear oil down?" and the pit tech says, "No, Hank. You have to drain it." So Hank adds 3.5 quarts of oil to the engine. This process repeated a couple times. Then hank sends the car on its way. Car comes back leading a HERD of police cars and spewing mountains of thick grey smoke. I pull it in, recognize that it was just here a minute ago and that Hank was working on it. I opened the fill cap and saw oil. We calculated that there was well over 12 quarts of oil in the car. I drained it, re-did the service, refunded the owner's money, then took the car out on the freeway for about 10 minutes pulling 6k RPM in 3rd gear to burn out the oil from the cylinders and exhaust system. Pulled it back in to the shop with no smoke, fired Hank right there on the spot in front of the customer (I was polite about it but it was for PR, not because I hated Hank. I did hate Hank though.) and the car owner thanked me and came back a few months later for his next change.

Oil change only please... DO NOT CHECK ANY OTHER FLUIDS!

In one ear and out the other.

I had an AWD Plymouth Voyager van

They over filled the rear differential.

The rear glass was covered with differential fluid.

I was not amused!

They also failed to replace the filler plug on the transfer case and it blew on I70 going about 70 mph.

Compounded by the transmission shop taking a month to locate a transfer case (Not many awd Voyagers made that year).

The transmission shop did not inspect the rear differential. I almost made it out of the parking lot for the shop.

They "forgot" to check it. The van was parked directly in front of the door into the shop.  I left directions to find and replace the rear differential. I knew it would take time.

After a month I called the shop to check on the progress and was told. "We did not think you wanted it repaired."

My response... "So it sat in front of the front door for a month and no one questioned why it was there?"

Three weeks later they found a salvaged one in Arizona.

One of the new hires took his Subaru to one. They drained the transmission and added oil. Didn't make it far.

I used a franchise outfit here called appropriately enough "Grease Monkey".  They failed to fully close my hood.  I drove from  the place and hit the ramp to the interstate.  About the time I hit seventy, my hood popped up about 1.5-2 inches.  Pulled over, closed it and called the manager. He offered a free oil change. Fuck that.

JFC.  

What's the point, OP?

Show me on the doll where the Jiffy Lube worker touched you.

When I was a kid, my mom took the family station wagon to some chain lube shop.

On the way home, the motor was making a new and unusual ticking noise. Fortunately my uncle mechanic lived nearby. He diagnosed it as collapsed lifters.

When my mom confronted the manager, amazingly enough they admitted a tech backed the vehicle out of the bay...without oil...since they needed the lift for something else. Guess he was hoping no damage occurred and let my mom drive off.

Cool thing was they let my uncle do the work and bill them for it.

I stopped going to Jiffy Lube when they wanted to charge more to change the oil in my jeep because it was a 4WD.

I heard a story of a guy's wheel falling off his van.

Exact same thing happened to my BIL. They blamed him for taking the plug out, which he did not do. He did not get compensated.

They stole a skateboard from my car. Not much I could do about it either. Sucked.

The couple times I ever tried one of those quick oil-change places, they said something like "Sorry, we don't have the right sized wrench for your drain plug."

Years ago my sister took her Subaru to JL.  

Drained and never refilled.  

Heard something funny and went back.  Oops.

That car was traded shortly thereafter.

My favorite one was an article a few years ago that I can’t find now.

Guy carry’s his pretty new Jaguar in the some low cost lube shop. They put the car on the rack, but the whole underbody is covered for aerodynamics or some shit. Obviously, the only choice is to take a sawzall to it and cut a hole to access the drain plug. So they did. The oil change was completed and the car didn’t make it out to the road before it fucked up.

Once it was looked into, they had actually drained the transfer case for the AWD and just poured the oil into the motor, doubling the amount of oil in the engine.

Thousands of dollars of damage. If you buy a $100k+ car, seems you wouldn’t want the lowest bidder doing the maintenance on it.

My horror story, I worked at jiffy lube for four weeks in 1985 while waiting for another job to start.

I still have some burn scars on my hands from the people that would drive around all day and then stop in for a quick oil change.

Their cars were blistering hot and no matter how careful I was, I would sometimes leave some flesh on the exhaust.

I worked at a Jiffy Lube during my senior year of high school and for a short time after that.  To say the place was a shit show would be more than kind.  When people say they will hire anyone, don't laugh and dismiss it as some joke.  Hell, they hired me!  

At the time, I had never so much as turned a wrench on a car.  Never done an oil change.  Never drained a transmission.  Nothing.  I got a grand total of an hour for training and then I was sent to the pit.  I did everything to the best of may ability and never caused any damage.  The other "techs" are a very different story.  I actually wound up being the best tech they had by the time I left.  

-  One particularly salty customer had a new-ish F-250 if I'm remembering correctly (late 90s).  Everyone knew him because he was such a joy to deal with.  Just a regular prick with nothing good to say.  He goes to the bay beside me and the other pit tech pisses in his oil filter and then screws it on.  No clue if it did any damage but I can't imagine it was good for the engine.  

-  Lots of families and teenagers from my school would come to this store to have their oil changed.  I'd see someone from school a couple times a week, easily.  Store manager gets caught looking these girls up in the customer system.  No clue if he did anything with the information but, creepy as fuck.  He didn't get fired or demoted.  None of the girls ever mentioned that he contacted them either.

-  I'm out for a few weeks letting a pretty nasty cut heal.  The cut was courtesy of a transmission pan and required 6 stitches.  Day 3 of me being gone, a car gets parked right in the pit.  I never got the particulars (make, model, etc) but the driver was fired and the whole store was drug tested that day.  I think 3 people were fired.

-  Kind of going back to the prior bit, the bulk oil room may as well have been a bar and smoke shack.  On any given day you would have at least 2 techs and the manager down there smoking pot several times.  I found a bottle of liquor and a 6-pack another day.  I didn't have much reason to go in there so I just stayed the hell out of there.  All of the filters were outside of that room anyway.  

-  A big bonus opportunity comes around and we're told if the store sells some number of high-dollar packages over the course of a month, everyone in the store gets a bonus.  Well, we met the number in the first 2 weeks and we're all pretty stoked.  Store manager lied his ass off to us about the bonus.  Apparently he called himself the whole store since he was the one to get a fairly hefty bonus while everyone else got nothing.  The sad part is I would bet every one of those packages was sold to people who didn't need them but trusted the topside guy.  These packages were $300 or more.  

-  For all of the bullshit and bravado the EPA likes to put out, they really don't care.  Seemingly in an effort to cut costs and secure himself another nice bonus, the manger decided cutting costs with the waste oil filter haul-off was where he could really gain some steam.  This is shortly after the whole bonus lie so we were all very pissed off and absolutely no love for the manager, store or company.  The manager would layer old oil filters in with the regular trash.  A day of trash would go in the dumpster and then a couple dozen oil filters would go in, then be covered by regular trash. It was figured out when the first bag of trash was thrown in after a  pick-up and the whole inside of the dumspter was coated in used motor oil.  We start watching and, sure enough, old filters are going in by the bagful.  Being pissed off, a few of us call the EPA and are willing to tell them everything we saw.  Zero.  Fucks.  Given.  A few weeks later, I had enough and left to go work for a real mechanic who taught me a lot of stuff.  Shortly thereafter, 2 cars go into the pit inside of a month and the manager and all employees are fired because they piss hot.  The store is closed for a week or so in order to get new staff brought in.  

I'm sure I have a few more that will come to mind but these are the ones that I could remember easily.  The most important thing I learned during my time at JL was to NEVER take a car there.  You stand about a 50% chance of not leaving with a drain plug.


ETA:  Don't ever let them vacuum your car at a quick lube.  Change will go missing with just a wave of the hose.   I worked at a car wash for a while and enjoyed it for the most part.  I tried to keep busy finding things that needed to be done when we didn't have any customers.  We'd had a busy spell for a couple hours and everything else was done, so I figured I would go clean out the vacuum.  I probably pulled $40 of change out of the collection bucket, alone.  There was another $15 caught up a little higher in there.  Upon my exit of the vacuum room, I was given quite the earful by the manager and was informed I was no longer allowed to clean the vacuum.  Only a couple guys were allowed to do that and I wasn't one of them.  Best I can figure is the manager was okay with the guys sucking up loads of change if he got his cut.  If I had to guess, I'd say they probably pulled down an extra $1,000/yr each, stealing change, if not more.  

Rumor also had it that the owner's daughter was caught fucking one of the employees in the vacuum room.  She was kind of a cutie in high school and I probably wouldn't have turned it down.  I'm kinda glad I didn't pursue that cum dumpster.  

When I was driving a tow truck I got a call for a lady broken down on the side of the freeway. I got out there and she had just had her car serviced at a quick lube place.

I forget if they changed the coolant or just checked it, but they forgot to put the radiator cap back on. She was cruising on the freeway and by the time she realized there was a problem and got pulled over, the engine was fried.

I worked at a jiffy lube in college, in high school I did oil changes at the ford dealership.

The manager came up to me one day and told me they were cutting me down to 7 hours a week. Obviously not enough to even scrape by on I asked why. To their credit they were honest. “The assistant manager is getting out of jail and needs his job back.”

Worked at a Jiffy Lube for a few months back in the 80's. It was a shit-show.

The one I was at had a literal retard doing the fills, and a couple of drug addicts in the pits.
I quit when the franchise owner threatened to fire me for sending his nephew home all the time for reeking of weed.

The nonsense?

Everything from the pit monkeys not actually checking diffs or lubing grease fittings, and just putting a blob of grease on each one, to outright hammering in drain plugs and using the wrong filters and sending cars out pissing oil.
Watched one guy try and sell an old lady an air filter on a car that had 25 miles and two weeks since it's last oil change, and employees bringing up premade "samples" of fouled diff or Tcase oil to upsell less than aware customers.
I put a stop to that, when I could. Fired a few clowns, then the franchise owner and regional manager got on my ass for "a decrease in sales".  
Well, yes, as I wasn't letting your fucking flying monkeys fleece the public, you assholes.

Not JL, but I used to know a guy who worked in Sears- obviously it’s been a few years. They had a cart with a used oil tank on one side, a filtering system, and a ‘reconditioned oil’ tank on the other side. Old oil goes in, gets filtered, and gets pumped into the next guy’s engine. Depending on who was ahead of you, the oil going into your engine might look worse than what they were draining out.

I worked at a Subaru dealer.  For some reason they would drain the Trans or front diff and fill the engine.
I had to replace the trans several times because the customer tried to drive it to our shop.
Most of the the time it was just poor performance  or codes set from the engine being over full.
Got to the point that first thing you checked was the oil level.

My bro in law used to work for their car wash side back in the day. Jiffy Lube / Automagic I believe it was.

After hearing how often they replaced engines I will never go to one.
They actually went out of business around here and were gone for about a decade but at least one has popped back up a couple years ago.

I have always done my own oil on my 22 year old vehicle. At the time I got it, the 0W-20 oil was "exotic" so I either had to go to the dealer or do it myself. Plus too many horror stories of the quick lube places. Add to that I have a magnesium oil pan and the drain plug threads can be stripped very easily if a torque wrench set to 28 ft/lb's is not used (I use one).

As for air cleaner, I brought my vehicle into a local service station for my yearly New York State inspection several years ago. Checking the air cleaner is NOT part of the inspection. But they did it anyhow and claimed I needed a new air filter (which I have). Lost one of the housing retaining clips that I had to buy a replacement for from Honda.

Never worked at a Jiffy Lube or anything similar, but I do have lots of dealership experience.
That’s a thread for itself.

My sister was pressed for time, and the BMW dealership was booked and she needed her m3's oil changed.  They drained her oil and filled the extra oil in the transmission.  Then proceeded to take it on a test drive.   Lawyers got involved, the car was totaled and now she's onto Porsches.

If they're doing it right(not bloody likely, it's Iffy Lube) you have at least 3 more things to check than my Buick has. Two differentials and a transfer case.


But yes, it's bullshit to charge more than a coupke dollars more, if that.

Dad had a brand new toyota camry company car, brooks brothers suit, laptop, and corded phone with 80k worth of pharmaceutical samples in late 90’s they put the wrong filter on it, it caught fire and torched everything

They had to replace the whole enchilada

If I was wanting all that then I agree.
however I didn't ask for that and their differential service was an extra charge.
this really was a case of them attempting to double the price simply because it was a 4WD.

You're actually defending Jiffy Lube?!

I'm guessing you either currently work at one, have previously worked at one, or own one. Am I correct?