Expert mechanic explains how to avoid common garage scam

There’s no worse feeling – your car’s playing up and you’ve got to make the dreaded trip to a garage to get it fixed.

As well as what the problem might be and how much it’ll cost to fix, you might even be worried about getting scammed by the garage.

Thankfully, an expert mechanic has posted a video giving some rather useful advice.

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Former mechanic Dean, who shares advice on YouTube under the alias “BMW Doctor”, said garages have a number of tricks to fleece gullible customers.

Some will even go as far as inflicting new damage on your vehicle to make you fork out for more repairs.

But by far the most common scam, probably because it’s easy to execute, is pulling out sensors.

“They will, if you’re not too certain about a car, disconnect one of your sensors or wiring from your ECU – and tell you that you’ve got a big problem with your car to make you spend money,” Dean said.

“A lot of the time it will be something simple which they know how to put back – for instance, your ignition coil wires.”

Dean’s advice is simple; buy your own diagnostic scanner so that you have a full inventory of engine parts before visiting the garage.

That’s not the only piece of useful advice Dean gave in the video – he also divulged another scam to be aware of.

“They’ll get oil in a little bottle and they wil pour it all over your bits here and tell you you’ve got leaks,” Dean said while pointing inside the hood of his BMW.

“So, for instance, on the valve cover they’ll put oil all down here or on your shocks to make you replace the shocks.

“I’m being very honest with you guys – I used to work in garages and we used to do this a lot.

“And I’m telling you we used to do this a lot because this is the way we used to make money.”

Knights don’t wear shining armor – they clearly wear mechanic’s overalls.

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