Jiffy Lube initially agreed to pay for damages they caused then denied responsibility! Warrensburg Missouri

My name is Lindsay and I am a professional transmission
mechanic, the owner of a car repair shop in Warrensburg
Missouri since 1984. I had a good relationship with the local Jiffy Lube until last week. Now I am letting everyone know why they shouldn't patronize this establishment.

I overhauled the transmission in a 1998 Caravan for a local Highway Patrolman. We cover all of our work with a 36 month/50,000 mile warranty and we let our customers know that they don't need to service their transmissions until 50,000 miles has elapsed. Well, this customer let Jiffy Lube talk him into servicing this transmission when he had gone there for a routine engine oil change at about 25,000 miles since overhaul.

Shortly after that, he started hearing new sounds and felt the vehicle slipping and revving up on the highway. I guess he didn't think was too serious until the vehicle started making louder sounds and then failed to back up one day. Realizing the transmission was still under warranty, he brought it back to my shop, where we promptly checked into the problem.

The first thing my tech noticed was that there was a gasket on the transmission oil pan. Chrysler doesn't use gaskets on the transmissions they manufacture for their front wheel drive vehicles, and neither do we. We called the owner and he confirmed that the transmission had been previously serviced by the local Jiffy Lube. Upon disassembly of the transmission we found that the Jiffy Lube employee that serviced the transmission had neglected to install the o-ring seal that seals the filter inlet to the valve body casting.

This was the cause of the "slipping" that the owner was feeling when he was driving down the road. You see, the o-ring seals the filter so that the pump is able to draw transmission fluid in the proper way. With this seal missing, the transmission pump was drawing air which burned the pump, starved the unit of lubrication and eventually resulted in the failure of the transmission.

I notified Jiffy Lube of our findings immediately. I was told by the Jiffy Lube employee that if they had made a mistake then they would take care of it. They had to verify that the vehicle had been serviced by them between the time we overhauled the transmission and the failure but their policy was to take care of the customer. I wanted to make sure I was hearing this correctly, so I asked him to repeat the statement because I was going to call the owner and let him know that Jiffy Lube had
agreed to pay for the repair. He said yes, it was their policy that they (Jiffy Lube) pays for any damages they cause.

I called the owner and explained what happened, and told him that anyone could have made that honest mistake and that Jiffy Lube was going to take care of the repair bill, and we were going to do the repair at a greatly reduced price as a professional courtesy. He was happy, and I thought I had done a good thing, keeping Jiffy Lube and my industry as a whole from looking bad.

We completed the repair and I submitted the bill to Jiffy Lube for $1533.44 which was about $1100 less then the normal fee for this extensive of a repair. I got a call from the manager stating that they were unaware of this problem and he was going to have to speak with the regional manager, Ben Jones in Kansas City.

The next day, the regional manager (Ben Jones) told me
that they weren't going to honor the agreement because the
transmission wasn't inspected when it was apart and that the customer should have brought the vehicle back to Jiffy Lube instead of Lindsay Transmission when it started acting up.

I was shocked! I told him about my conversation on Monday with the local Jiffy Lube employee and he dismissed it saying that local managers are not qualified to authorize any repairs or payments. He told me that he would have to discuss this with "his" upper management team.

I called the vehicle owner and explained this to him and got him involved in trying to get Jiffy Lube to make this right. His phone calls to the Kansas City central office, 816 304 8690 went unreturned just like mine.

Long story short, no Jiffy Lube employee will admit talking to me last Monday and they refused to take care of this problem. I was faced with a customer that needs his van back and of course, he doesn't want or think he should have to pay the bill. If I keep the van then I become a villain as well! I have worked for over 23 years to build a spotless reputation in my community and my industry and I not going to let Jiffy Lube tarnish it!

So the only thing I could do to was to give the customer his van and take the hit from Jiffy Lube's irresponsible service work and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their mistakes. Since there is no way I can recover any of my losses from Jiffy Lube all I can do is try and prevent any future losses by urging everyone I know NOT to let Jiffy Lube touch their vehicles as they might be caught in a similar situation.


Lindsay
Warrensburg, Missouri
U.S.A.

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