LEGOPARTY

“Phantom sales” is the practice of charging for parts and services that are not actually delivered. On low-priced services, if the workers aren’t going to do additional repairs, they might skip parts of the service that people won’t notice—like not checking all the fluid levels on a “lube and oil,” or not checking the timing, idle speed, and ignition system on a cheap tune-up. If they’re caught, they can just apologize and make it look like an honest mistake. But shops running this scam are rarely caught.
Many of these shops also recommend fuel injection service to practically every customer, claiming that it’s recommended every 25-30,000 miles as “regular maintenance.” That’s totally unnecessary—injectors should only be cleaned when a vehicle has a driveability problem caused by dirty injectors.
In fact, on many late-model cars, frequent cleaning of injectors can damage them, resulting in repair bills of $500 to $1,000 to install new ones. (This is another good reason to avoid shops with low-skilled workers—they can damage your car.) Also, most vehicles built since 1990 have “deposit-resistant” injectors that make cleaning a waste of time—and money.
In some shops, practically every customer who comes in for a low-priced oil change or tune-up is told that they
need a new PCV valve, fuel filter, injection cleaning and! or transmission/differential service (even though those items weren’t checked first). Customers who come in for low-priced brake jobs are often sold calipers, wheel cylinders, rotors, drums or other high-priced parts that aren’t needed. And, in fact, many large tune-up chains have been caught doing just that.