Originally Posted By: cashmoney
I'd go back in to the shop and be 100% honest about the noises I thought I was hearing now and ask them to take a look at it and see if anything may have happened while car was up on the lift or being serviced. In other words I'd assume they were 100% honest until proven otherwise in this specific case especially with a trivial $100 repair bill.
The only caveat to that was that if I felt beforehand that they were completely incompetent or thieves I would not go back at all for any reason and take the car to another shop and chalk up first experience and cost to lessons learned "tuition".
Most independent shops that have been around for a while are good at making a reasonable profit but they are also honest or they don't survive and prosper. I prefer to assume these small business are honest until proven otherwise and find that a sincere honest, open, and frank conversation in a situation like this is very powerful in terms of getting help and building a relationship with the business owner.
I suggest folks adapt an attitude that they want to be a repeat long term customer and initially seek to build a trust relationship with a small business instead of approaching a small transaction like this with a mood of suspicion and mistrust which the other person will most certainly pick up on and that mood will generally produce poor results both short term and long term. Develop the practice of having open, sincere conversations and generate a mood of trust and you will get way better results over time, not always because there are always some dirtbags in the world, but most of the time honesty and trust works out just fine.
Well put.
As for the recommendation to replace the whole sway bar- I believe they have good reason to. I've seen and replaced lots of GM sway bars because they're a tube that has been pinched together at the ends. The spot where it was pinched then rusts out and breaks. Dorman makes an over sized (really not over sized, just the biggest size that was an option), solid bar to replace the failure prone hollow one. The only problem is- just like all things Dorman, there will likely be an issue down the road. In this case, the bushings that they supply will probably rot out in a year or two. You should be able to find an equivalent replacement through whatever bushing line you or the shop prefers though.