Automotive Diagnostics

You hear a clunking sound. Or maybe you hit a pothole.

Whatever the reason, you’re having an issue with your car, and you need to bring it in for service. When you’re speaking with a service writer and dropping your vehicle off, it’s crucial that you be honest and give as much information as possible. You shouldn’t lie to your mechanic.

In some cases, customers will not tell the full truth about what’s going on with their vehicle. Maybe they’re embarrassed about what happened, or maybe they don’t want to pay what they think will be more money if they’re honest. But no matter what the reason, you need to be completely honest with your auto technician.

“Don’t be embarrassed about what’s going on with your car. Just like a doctor – tell me anything. Full disclosure can lead to a better car diagnosis,” said Robert Moser, a technician at HomeTowne Auto Repair & Tire.

Reasons why you shouldn’t lie to your mechanic

If you’re not telling a technician or service advisor what the problem is, it makes it hard for the technician to pinpoint the problem so that it can be fixed.

“I might hear several funny noises on a test drive, but I need to know which one you want me to fix. I’d hate to fix something, only to find out it wasn’t the issue you were originally having,” said Moser.

Even if you don’t think a piece of information is fully relevant, telling our staff as much detail as possible will actually help you out in the long run.

“When you disconnect your battery or do an emissions repair that requires you to disconnect your battery, there are several monitors on your car that need to be set…even though it’s not necessarily a lie, some people don’t think that it’s important, even if we ask,” said Joe Wood, service advisor for HomeTowne Auto Repair & Tire.

By hiding or leaving out information, it can have a big impact on the amount of time you’re waiting for your car to be repaired.

“A customer came in, complaining of no cool air coming from the dashboard, and that’s all the information that she gave us. We pulled the car in, checked the gauges on the AC equipment…after talking customer we had to call back and found that she was losing air at a higher RPM…then we were finally able to track down the problem. If we had known that from the start, it would’ve helped us to speed up the process of finding her problem,” said Eddie Carico, service advisor for HomeTowne Auto Repair & Tire.

And if you think that it’s going to be a way to save money on repairs, you’ll actually end up spending more overall, because of the extra time it takes for technicians to diagnose the problem.

“The less information they can feed us, they think the cheaper it’s going to be in repairs, but it doesn’t work that way,” said Carico.

“Lying to your mechanic can create more problems than it can solve. For example, customer comes in, says their engine light turned on and they said that no work had been done on it – the light had just come on. Look at the car, find that the intake had been off, wires were not connected, the vacuum line was not connected properly and a gasket had been put on upside down. If the customer had told us that work had been done, we’d have known where to look a lot sooner…and it would have saved about two hours of diagnostic time,” said Keith Clausson, a technician for HomeTowne Auto Repair & Tire.

So the next time you have a problem with your car, be honest and tell us the full story. There’s no judgment and we’ll be happy to work on your car, knowing that we have all of the information to fix it quickly and properly.