Firestone Complete Auto Care

On 4/28/2017 I took my husband’s 2012 Dodge Ram 3500 to this location to have a simple oil change performed, in preparation for a camping trip to the beach with our children.  On 4/30/2017, only 160 miles after the oil change, the truck motor blew up, resulting in a $24,000 motor replacement and a lost vacation as we had no additional means to pull our camper.  As an Insurance Agent I knew that I needed to document everything, so I took many photos at the scene documenting the loss of oil, the hole in the side of the motor, and we even took an oil sample from the truck.  The next morning we reluctantly agreed to have the truck towed back to this location for diagnosis, and to no one’s surprise Vance (the manager) determined that the motor blowing up was not caused by their oil change.  When we picked the truck up all of the evidence of massive oil loss had been cleaned up, and the oil plug now had a yellow chalk circle around it, all of which did not compare to the photos of the areas prior to the truck being towed back to them.  At this point, when I pointed out that the photos did not match I was offered half of the replacement as a settlement ($11,9XX) from Firestone, which I denied because the incident was not 1/2 my fault so I should not be responsible for 1/2 of the damage.  Firestone stated that they were offering me this $11,9XX settlement not as accepting fault, but as a "customer satisfaction" or "good will."  WOW, that's quite a large settlement to offer if you were 100% sure that this was not your fault, ALSO keep in mind that we also had the oil analysis which stated that the "viscosity of the oil was too low."  Finally, after much despair and aggravation I decided to file the claim on the vehicle insurance.  A full motor tear down was performed by a certified diesel mechanic and the adjuster agreed along with the diesel mechanic that there was absolutely NO doubt that the issue was in fact caused by oil as ALL 6 CRANK BEARINGS were shot along with the main being chewed up.  Insurance paid nearly $28,000 total and regained that money from Firestone.  Now, keep in mind that we were without our camper tow vehicle, boat tow vehicle, and my husband uses his truck for work for 98 days!  Not to mention the countless hours, unreturned emails, calls and stress that we dealt with on this.  We attempted to trade the vehicle, as you can imagine we just want away from this entire situation, and were told by the local Dodge dealer that the truck had depreciated by $9,900. We asked Firestone for the depreciation, along with the loss of use for 98 days on the vehicle and although they accepted fault on the motor repair they have denied paying the additional costs.  I would strongly suggest reading other reviews of Firestone prior to using this, or any location for anything even as small as an oil change.  I drove 45 minutes to use this location, due to a long history of dealing with them and we were treated horribly by them, and their corporate claims office throughout this entire process.  Had I not had the knowledge to keep pushing, we would have paid the motor replacement out of pocket.