Wal-Mart: Low Prices. Lower Standards.

i went to walmart earlier this week and it took them 5 hours to change my oil…literally 5 hours in the garage thingy…theyre reson (which they told me after 2 hours of waiting)they dont stock an oil filter that fits a 77 pontiac 400 engine!!!!and to make maters worse i had to pay for the oil change after spending an entire day there!!!!!!!!!

I guess I’ve been lucky in reading all these horor stories. I purchased 4 new tires and haven’t had any problems.

Sorry you guys have had bad luck!

I thought I was the only one who had horrible experiences at the WalMart auto shop, now I see I am not alone. A few years ago I took my car (1989 Crown Victoria), this was my first car I was 18 at the time. Anyway, I realize my car was what other people would consider junk, but i loved this car it was my baby and I took pride in my piece of junk which was made better than most modern cars. Back to my point, I took my car in for a oil change. I figured it was just an oil change no big deal. So I wait for over 4 hours, lame, finally my car was done. So I took it home drove as usual for a couple weeks when I suddenly start leaking oil like crazy. I figured the car was just old so I had a mechanic friend change out some gaskets, which is when he found that a hole had been drilled into my oil pan and whoever drilled the hole had place a bolt into the hole to create a slow leak!!!!!! I was outraged! I went back to WalMart bolt in hand and confronted the auto shop manager who of course denied any involvement and offered no consolation at all. I pitched a fit being young and slightly stupid I became a little more rude than I should have and started name calling the foreigners working in the oil change area. This was an extremely dirty trick to pull on a young girl and her crappy but beloved first car! I have not ever gone back to get any type of car service at walmart since. In fact I try my hardest to not even shop at walmart and I go to Target instead which to me is the lesser of the two evils. Walmart is crap.

I have gone to wallyworld twice for tires only, and have had good luck. Of course, leaving the empty boxes of 30-06 shells,.45 caliber shells, and paper targets with the centers shot out in my truck may have contributed to a bit more concientious service?
Not to mention my USMC sniper’s badge hanging on the mirror…….

I got and oild chang check and fill from walmart TLE at the start of june , middle of July was on my way to my unit for AT and the car started making noice pulled in to my unit and had the mechanics check it out. The oild filter was corroded and clogged no oil at all and caused a piston to blow and bearign to spin in short engine is screwed so we called they looked on their computer and said they didnt have the oil filter in stock that day so just added a few qts of oil. The mechanic flipped he told me since they didnt change the filter it caused the engine to burn all the oil as it was backed up. I am waiting to hear back from as I wait a section sgt is also a state constaple and is looking in to the situation as to pursue legal matters. Since walmart felt they didnt need to tell me they werent gonna actually do the oil change or anything really

Well I’ve had trouble with Wal Mart too, i got my oil changed there and about 2 weeks later i was going to change the air filter, only to see that the awesome technicians of wal-mart had taken off the air filter cover and had it sitting on the engine and also had left a screw driver to slide around in there. YEAH Wal-mart sucks

My solution to this problem? I’ve stop going altogether. I go there for NOTHING! If I can find it elsewhere (which is 99.99~% of the time) I always go the opposite way. Sure they are a business like everybody else but it has gotten out of control. Don’t like Wal-Mart? DON’T GO THERE!!!

Why is everyone so surprised at this. It’s WALMART!!! Anyone who cares about their car would never take it to WALMART to have it serviced. Then again I’m the kind of person that wouldn’t take my car most places to have it service so maybe I’m a bit jaded…

Just another bad tire situation at Wal-Mart. During the Winter months while riding on my less than favorable slick Pirellis I purchased a set of all weather Kumho Ecstas. I was like any student broke and trying to find a place to install the tires cheap. The only place around aside from Wal-mart was Good year who wanted $50 a tire to install and balance. Knowing better I went to Wal-mart to get some brake fluid for my clutch master cylinder and check out their rates. $45 for all four. I asked them if they could change the tires without hurting the rims and if they knew how to install them on wheel spacers and keep them balanced properly. The mechanic said yes but it would be a couple hours. I said sure $45 bucks wait two hours and be able to drive in the rain again sounds pretty good. Three hours later they call me back and tell me Wal-mart policy was that the could not do anything with the wheel spacers. So I paid about $2 for the brake fluid hopped into the car and left. Heading out of the parking lot there was a bad bounce to the car at speeds from 15-30 cruising and all the way to 0 decelerating. Of course I figured it was the wheel spacer and no way was I going back. After spending a while dealing with the bounce I found a shop that was willing to let me work with them and try to get the spacer set right. After a couple of trys we determined that the spacer had been cinched down on one side so tight that it damaged the balance of the spacer itself and now to fix it I can either get new rims with a negative offset 300-800 dollars or continue dealing with spacers and buy a new pair ~$150 or so. Thanks Wal-mart. I’ve learned my lesson, never again.

let me point out that there is no way i would have taken my car to walmart if i didnt have the tire blow out RIGHT by it… i tried putting air in it but the tire was off of the rim… and because of the blowout i was unable to get a jack under my car…

update on the story… complained to the store manager and the assistant manager was moved to night shift after refusing to take the estimate from me… now the new manager has looked over the security video, called about why the bumper is not repairable and why it costs $1800… and now he said he would look over the video one last time and contact me by the end of the week with more information… they are just trying to not send it into their insurance company… but if he says they are not paying this time… its straight to a lawyer…

I would like to add that I am with Sean on this one, I would have been pissed if someone had told me a tech was joy riding in my auto… in fact, I would have used their phone and called the police, reporting my car as stolen and talking as loud as possible so that as many of their other customers would have heard… my mom agrees with me ;oD

OMFG… I’d be livid and would have left that place with a free oil change, vacuum, car wash and management kissing my ass. That’s unbelievable.

Yeah… I had to have Wal*Mart replace the battery in my ‘Kik one year (I was pregnant) and they didn’t notice that the battery cable wasn’t connected well and was actually practically useless… so I had to take it to Farris at the Dealership…

On another ocasion, they threw away my mom’s car key because the place where they hang the keys? Yeah, right above the trashcan… idiots…

One of my friends had a blowout in their parking lot, so his only choice was to get it pushed there. They took his tire off, remounted it, patched it, put it back on. It was an aluminum rim, and they put it on with a tire iron, no torque wrench. The wheel fell on on his drive home, and Walmart didn’t pay a dime for his wrecked rim and bumper.

I work at Advance Auto Parts and one day we had a guy have his car towed in from Wal Mart. Apparently, he went to get his battery replaced there and the schmuck who did it put the cables on backwards and fried something (or maybe everything) in the electrical system.

I don’t even know why people to go Wal Mart for that kinda stuff. Half the time they have to send someone to our store because they don’t even have the correct oil filters…

I went in for an oil change and they side stripped my plug and oil pan. They weren’t going to compensate me for it until i told them they are the only place i have ever had my oil changed and showed them documents. They then wanted to only shell out 50% of the bill on a new oil pan. I charged them full price and now i get my oil changes at employee discount permanently at that location.

I’ve heard horror stories about places from Walmart to upscale dealerships. Crap happens everywhere, which is why I maintain my vehicle myself. No one else is touching my car, especially someone that I do not know.

Tires are another story, but I have a friend that I think I can trust with my wheels at a dealership, heh.

Unfortunate. Although you get what you pay for. Reason and logic may tell us that if you are taking your vehicle to the lowest bidder for service, we should not be surprised if we receive the lowest level of service.

When my wife had a blowout late one Sunday afternoon, I had another tire(ordered an extra with the set online), but I had no way to mount it. My only choice at the time was Wal-mart. I pulled the wheel off the car and took it and the spare up there. I told the guy ” white letters on the inside, black on the outside.” When I returned, it was opposite of what I had said. The guy then informed me that it was ok like that because the tires weren’t directionals, so it didn’t matter. He was blown away at the fact that I made him change it around so the letters would match the other three tires.

I haven’t personaly, but I know 2 different people that had their cars taken in for oil changes and the idiots working there forgot to replace the oil plug. Both engines blew up and wal-mart complained about having to replace them.. I alos know someone who had over 400 cd’s stolen from their car during an oil change at wal-mart.