pep boys RIP OFF BEWARE las cruces New Mexico

I live in Dallas, Texas and my power steering hose was leaking fluid. I'm a woman and had no experience fixing the thing. I took my vehicle to peop bots who told me they charge $99 dollars an hour and that they had a 4 hour 'minimum'. They labor plus their charge for the hose was going to run over $500.00.

A friend of mine suggested I take my car to a small Mexican owned shop not far from my home. Those guys told me to go buy the hose and they would charge me $45.00 to put it on. lomg story short i had the hose on my car in under 1 hour and was out labor costs of only $45.00 with an overall cost of $125.00 as the hose was close to $80 at the local autozone. 

I have not not been back to pep boys since and this happened several years ago. I knew then they were crooks. The thing is these types of auto shops place incredible pressure on those guys to sale and to find ways to increase profits. The pressure is so intense that many of those guys lie. Go to YouTube. YouTube has several videos of undercover investigations showing how big ripoffs those chain mechanic stores are. 

I had had a friend that use to work for one. He said they would start charging by the hour when they pulled the car around back. He said that they would pull the car around back even though they were still working on another car and wouldn't touch the car for an hour or two yet the person was still paying for that time the vehicle was just sitting there. He then said the guys would often go to lunch and leave the car sitting there and the person was paying for that time too. 

He told me the guys would also purposely unhook a bolt or loosen a wire and then go and get the customer to show them and charge them another fee. Leave these box stores ALONE. Find a good guy, a local mechanic who is knowledgeable and have him do the work. Or take the car to the dealer.