My wife took our 2005 Toyota Camry here for a routine oil change, and was surprised when the tech said we had an oil leak. We just bought the car about 5 months ago so this was our second oil change. It has been a good car and we haven't had any problems with it. We never noticed any oil leaking, never smelled burning oil, and the oil light has never come on. In fact, less than a week earlier, we had taken the car from Louisville to Nashville and back. There were absolutely no indicators of an oil leak.
The tech took her back to show her the oil that was all over the engine. It was covered in oil -- splattered up on the underside of the hood (right above the oil cap) and all over the manifold. She didn't think about it at the time, but the oil was fresh -- definitely not oil that had been running through an engine for three months. The engine looked fairly clean except for the fresh oil -- There was no dirt and grime that would have certainly accumulated and attached itself to the oil if there had been an oil leak happening for a period of time. Since it was fresh, the oil had to have already been changed at this point. Furthermore, the car was in the garage for about 10-15 minutes before the tech came to speak with her -- sufficient time to change the oil, but too much time to not have already noticed the mess of oil that was all over.
The tech explained that the car was going to need about $500 worth of repairs. My wife immediately called me worried about the cost. I asked her to have them finish the oil change, but hold off on the repairs while I called my automotive friend at the car lot where we bought the car. My friend asked if we would bring the car by so he could look at it.
My wife drove the 15 miles from Meineke to the car lot. After looking at the car, he immediately told her that with as much oil as it was losing, that she would end up on the side of the road if she tried to take it home. He said that there is no way anyone could drive the car much more than a day without ending up on the side of the road.
But that wasn't all he said. Because of the pattern of oil on the top of the car above the oil cap and all over the top of the manifold, our automotive friend said, "I'm 100% certain that the car was started with the oil cap off." He explained that if it was just the manifold leaking, there is no way the oil would seep "up" to the top of the manifold and to the hood of the car.
The next day, after he replaced the valve cover set, he explained that he didn't like to accuse people of shoddy work, but this looked very suspicious. The valve cover gasket was split in half in a way that does not happen from normal usage. It almost looked as if someone had taken a screwdriver and wedged it up against it. He suggested that a possible scenario was that a rookie technician mistakenly left the cap off, started the car, and, in an effort to cover his mistake, wedged a screwdriver into the valve cover gasket.
That last bit is quite speculative. But what is not speculative is that my car was working fine before I took it to Meineke, and it was not after I left. There is no way we could have been driving around with that bad of a leak, and for three months up to that point, no one has been under the hood of that car except for Meineke.
Ironically, if the Meineke technician had come to my wife and told her, "I'm sorry. We made a mistake and we need to keep your car for a bit longer to fix it. Don't worry about the cost -- we made the mistake, it's on us..." I would probably be a Meineke customer for life. But don't expect to see me at Meineke after this.
I reported this to the management of the company and had someone call me back. Over the course of several phone calls, the gentleman and I spoke, but he didn't seem to be concerned about my car or the circumstances. The conclusion was that he supposedly reviewed the tapes of the incident and didn't notice anything unusual. So he wasn't going to give me my money back. Other than off-the-wall speculation, he couldn't explain why my car came to the shop without an oil leak and left with an oil leak. Nor could he explain how I was to trust his word that nothing happened against all of the evidence.
