For some time you have been hearing an almost undetectable grinding sound every time you push the brake pedal. You finally bring in your car for routine maintenance, but it’s early in the morning and you are in a rush heading to work, so you forget to mention the grinding noise to your mechanic.
Months go by and the noise is still there, even louder now, so you finally decide to bring in the vehicle to get it checked. After the inspection, your mechanic tells you that you need to repair not only the brake pads, but also the rotors, which were not due until the next brake job. Ignoring the fact that your brake pads needed to be replaced (grinding noise) caused the rotors to wear out, therefore adding an incremental expense that could have been easily avoided, if you had promptly communicated the noise to your technician.
To avoid this risk and make it as easy as possible for our customers to describe what is wrong with their cars, we created the Vehicle Symptom Questionnaire. This short questionnaire will help you summarize car symptoms, driving habits and occurrence frequency. Simply print the questionnaire located on the sidebar at the right-hand side of your screen and fill it out before your appointment and we’ll do the rest. Don’t have a printer at home? No worries, we always have some back-up copies available at the front desk. With your questionnaire filled out, we can then create a complete diagnosis, saving you time and money.
Think this might be a total waste of time? Find out what happened to our customer Steve (fictitious name)…
A few months ago Steve brought in a Volvo V70 Cross Country, which he had recently purchased for his college bound child. Steve didn’t get the vehicle inspected before purchasing it, as he was told that all he had to do was replacing the timing belt. So, when Steve brought in the Volvo, he was certain that there were no other problems with the vehicle.
After replacing the timing belt, our team took the Volvo for a test drive, only to find that the transmission slipped when the vehicle was cold and when shifting from 2nd to 3rd gear. When reporting our findings to Steve, he informed us that he had noticed the condition before, but didn’t feel as though it was a big deal.
Unfortunately, because Steve didn’t communicate the condition to our team before replacing the timing belt and servicing the vehicle, the additional necessary repairs made this job much more expensive than expected.
We highly recommend that you always make note of every single symptom, even if it seems insignificant at the time, and tell us about it the next time you bring in your vehicle.