Maintaining used cars can come with periodic expenses, but it’s unusual for the cost of maintenance to equal the value of the car itself. However, one Subaru owner found themselves facing this exact situation after a recent visit to a local service shop. What complicates matters is that much of the recommended work has already been completed, several of the suggested parts are actually downgrades, and the estimated labor cost seems to be significantly inflated.
Notably, the person in this predicament is in Ottawa and the bill actually comes to over $17,000 CAD. Shared on Reddit’s Subaru forum, user Undrscor says that he was considering selling his 2009 Subaru WRX STI. It has some 217,000 km (134,838 miles) on the odometer so the potential buyer took it to a shop for a third-party evaluation.
Take a glance at the end links again. The shop allegedly wants over $1,000 to replace them which is, as other commenters point out, about 10 times the proper amount for such a simple job using inexpensive parts. Then there are the ball joint charges. Notice that they’re for the lower front control arms which are also quoted but separately. Unless they’re using some sort of very strange control arms, the ball joints will come with the arm assembly, so why are they on here twice?
Finally, why is the shop charging almost $1,000 to do the rear brakes? Not only is that an absurd amount of cash for rear brakes in general, but they’re not even using the same Brembo parts that come stock on the car.
The moral of the story is go find yourself a trusted shop like Can-Jam Motorsports where this kind of silliness would never happen.
From an article originally published on CARSCOOPS.
That reminds me the “Johnson rod” episode of Seinfeld.
https://youtu.be/Bu-A8YfC4w0?si=noQ2bIN4dHTLaAtl
That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
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And surprisingly, I have never seen that Seinfeld episode!