People who treat their cars badly.

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mmntech

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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Buddy of mine used to work at a quick lube shop. Lady brought in her car complaining about poor engine performance. Said he opened up the oil drain and it came out like tar. He asked her when and where she got her last oil change done. Her response? This was her first oil change. Car had something like 35,000km on it.

Took him the whole day just to drain the thing. Kept the oil in a jar on the front desk to show people why they need to change it.

I used to work at a car rental agency, and had more than my share of facepalm moments. One time this lady phoned in complaining about a red light on her dashboard. I asked her what it looked like. "Oh, it's a big red exclamation point in a circle." She had been driving around all day with the parking brake on.

Car interiors also used to come back with all sorts of head scratching messes. Filled with food, garbage, mystery stains, cigarette burns. Pet hair was always the worst. It gets caught in the fabric so it would take about half an hour to vacuum it all out. About the time it took me to clean two cars.

The worst mess we had to deal with was the catering company who left a plate of roasted garlic in the back of one of our cargo vans. We were closed Sundays, so it sat festering in the hot sun until we opened it up Monday morning. Never did get the smell out.
 
I

inachu

Platinum Member
Aug 22, 2014
2,387
2
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It took 2 months to get the smell of cigarette smoke out of my challenger.

I drove as often as I could with the window down and Febreeze kinda helped out.
 
JulesMaximus

JulesMaximus

No Lifer
Jul 3, 2003
74,544
924
126
mmntech said:
Buddy of mine used to work at a quick lube shop. Lady brought in her car complaining about poor engine performance. Said he opened up the oil drain and it came out like tar. He asked her when and where she got her last oil change done. Her response? This was her first oil change. Car had something like 35,000km on it.

Took him the whole day just to drain the thing. Kept the oil in a jar on the front desk to show people why they need to change it.

I used to work at a car rental agency, and had more than my share of facepalm moments. One time this lady phoned in complaining about a red light on her dashboard. I asked her what it looked like. "Oh, it's a big red exclamation point in a circle." She had been driving around all day with the parking brake on.

Car interiors also used to come back with all sorts of head scratching messes. Filled with food, garbage, mystery stains, cigarette burns. Pet hair was always the worst. It gets caught in the fabric so it would take about half an hour to vacuum it all out. About the time it took me to clean two cars.

The worst mess we had to deal with was the catering company who left a plate of roasted garlic in the back of one of our cargo vans. We were closed Sundays, so it sat festering in the hot sun until we opened it up Monday morning. Never did get the smell out.
Click to expand...

I also used to work for a car rental company. I would keep up on the maintenance as best I could for the vehicles in my fleet but cars would routinely go beyond the recommended service interval, sometimes by thousands of miles. I remember getting a car from a NYC office on a one way rental that had 36,000 miles on the original oil filter-it had NEVER had an oil change. I refused to accept it and made them come and get it.

Sometimes we would get deadbeat renters who keep a car past the original agreement date and then stop paying so we would have to repossess the car. This one woman had left raw meat in the trunk for 2 weeks. Deadbeat, CC declined. Never did get the smell out of the upholstery.

Another time I had a customer come in claiming the airbag had just "gone off" for no reason and he wanted another car. I told him to bring in the car he had, I took one look underneath the car and saw that it had been hit on the undertray and the engine was leaking fluid. He must have gone over a dip at high speed and bottomed the suspension hard enough to blow the airbags. Needless to say, he didn't get another car and we put a claim in against his insurance for the damages.

My experience in the car rental industry is why I will NEVER buy a car that was previously a rental vehicle.
 
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