STS Tire and auto Hillsborough Rip Off Oil Change Internet

What was the estimate you were quoted at the time you requested service?

They could buy it from Walmart and charge me $5 more and still make a profit.
- You are so generous in letting them make $5.  Obviously you have never run a business or you would realize how silly that statement is.  It would cost them more than that in just labor costs it takes to buy the oil.

If you really wanted to save money why don't you go to Walmart and then change your own oil?  You would have saved almost $50.

Perhaps next time you should get an estimate BEFORE you have the work done.

You are so generous in letting them make $5.  Obviously you have never run a business or you would realize how silly that statement is.  It would cost them more than that in just labor costs it takes to buy the oil.

-Obviously you didn't get my point when mentioning the $5 profit, as I would not expect any company to purchase their stock from Walmart or any other retail store for that matter, I very well know the costs involved in running a business, I also know the cost of the oil they buy and how much they buy it for since my company makes the oil they buy. I am a plant foreman for an oil terminaling company, so when you speak of costs, I very well know them and I know that was a ripoff. I also would very much enjoy changing my own oil, but since time does not allow me to I have to seek a quicker solution that best suits me without being over charged. 

You still never answered the question, what was the estimate the second shop gave you before changing the oil? Or what did the signage say about their pricing? I know around here the prices are all posted. Also, I guess it depends on your supplier. Amazon has this brand of oil for 48$ for a 5 liter jug. Walmart would price out to about 30$ so how do you know what price this shop paid when the price clearly fluctuates?

So I guess you are an a**.  Because it was you who assumed that the cost of the synthetic oil would only be a couple of bucks more.

, I very well know them and I know that was a ripoff
- Okay since you know ALL of the costs involved please tell all of us uninformed people how much they bought this oil for and how much profit that you would allow them to make on it?

But... It's not their fault. It's the fault of store management and upper management. STS underpays their techs, plain and simple, and then they promise them the world with their 'commission program', but when the profitable jobs come into the shop, management just gives these jobs to the techs who are not on the commission program. The techs who ARE on the commission program are left with the unsavory choice of... ripping people off.



The district managers are all pitted against one another. This makes them push the store managers, who in turn push the techs. Management doesn't want to know what you are doing... If you get caught, they will try to help you out, if you are pulling in the 'numbers'; if you aren't, you get left out to 'flop in the wind'. If your numbers fall behind, you get reprimanded. This reprimand goes all the way up the food chain, from tech, to store manager, to district manager. 



STS is starting to shy away from actually 'fixing' cars. They are moving towards just doing tires, alignments, and fluid maintenance. Those are the things that you can train a monkey to do. They don't want to pay their top techs top dollar, they want to hire kids out of school and pay them nothing to do tires, alignmenets, and fluid changes. With the new alignment machines, you don't even have to know anything about cars; the machine tells you exactly what to do!  



I saw one guy get bounced around from shop to shop because he wasn't pulling in the numbers. Do you know what his problem was? He had integrity. He couldn't sell people oil flushes (which are useless!), or any other of the fluid services. He couldn't sell rotors and calipers on every brake job. He couldn't sell belts, tires, or cabin air filters on every oil change. He had integrity. He cared for his customers. That landed him onto the unemployment line when the big mass exodus happened in the fall of '09. Companies used the economy as an excuse to get rid of what they thought was the 'dead wood'. STS was on the crest of that trend. 



Find yourself a local guy. Someone that you can trust. Stay away from the STSs of the world, the Pep Boys, the Sears, the Midases, the Goodyears, the Firestones. Sometimes the local guy can rip you off too. Hey, it's not a perfect world! But... the odds are better that you are being ripped off by the ones that I mentioned above! I worked at STS... for a long time. I got out, and I'm doing much better now!



Do your homework, ask around, check out this site, reasearch! You'll find the good guys, they're out there! Peace!    

We never verified that this was a rip off because the OP refused to tell us what the quote was.

We never verified that this was a rip off because the OP refused to tell us what the quote was.



Understood. I just wanted to add my personal experiance, being a former employee of the company :) 

Have you learned to now sign the work order BEFORE the work is done? An oil change WONT be an estimate, unless they are not sure of how many quarts the vehicle takes. NO BRAINER