rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk
about whether you should have your car
serviced at a Walmart car repair center
or not now in all honesty I go to Walmart
all the time and buy stuff because they
have great prices i buy my fantastic
blue paper towels there I often buy a
lot of oil there they got a good
selection and a very good price no you
have to realize that Walmart is not an
auto discount parts store they have a
very limited amount of car star
batteries tires oil cleaning supplies
stuff like that and they got good prices
on it hey buy your stuff there I got
nothing against that you always want a
comparison shop I was working on a
customer's car a quality battery for at
Walmart cost $89 they had a cheaper one
it was 45 but it was a low cranking the
one that it was called for costed by 90
bucks any equivalent battery autozone
ORiley for over one hundred and fifty
nine dollars so sure but better Walmart
was a better price for a quality battery
there's nothing wrong with doing that
but do you want to take your car there
my advice on that is you might think
twice first of all I only do limited
things oil changes putting tires
batteries in they're not real mechanics
working there they can work on your car
and do serious stuff they call them
technicians but I didn't research they
start them out at $11 an hour a
technician in an actual garage or
dealership they get paid between
twenty-five and fifty five dollars an
hour so as the saying goes if you pay
peanuts you get monkeys you're not gonna
get highly trained highly skilled people
working for $11 an hour here in the
United States
I talked to guys that now work at
autozone that used to work at Walmart
and they pretty much said well the one
pro of the Walmart car repair places is
you can get a job they're easy they will
hire anyone and that's what almost all
of these guys said but in $11 an hour
they said some of them were they're sick
years didn't get any pay raises they're
still making $11 an hour not too
motivational for the guys to learn to do
stuff and really hustle around and the
biggest complaint of people who do go
there to get their oil change list oh it
took forever one person said it was four
hours they're gonna get their oil change
and that the people just ignore him and
they looked in the bay and the guys are
just standing around bs and smoking
cigarettes and stuff I have to say Sam
Walton the man was a hustler when he was
young he at five and nine store he drove
all night to the other side of Arkansas
so he could buy these women clothes
cheap then come back to his store and
before they opened at six o'clock in the
morning he had it all displayed so he
could undercut the guy across the street
and do more business by saving people
money for making a profit himself
if only Sam could see the laziness and
indifference of many of his workers he'd
be rolling over his grave seeing how
they treated his customers sure they're
only doing simple things like changing the
oil
putting tires on the car but any
batteries in but modern cars are a lot
more complex than they used to be to
give you a perfect example at a customer
went to Walmart later he comes to me
saying I'm having problems with this
battery I put my fancy load testing
machine on this $800 Medtronic's said
the battery was bad sir he went back to
Walmart and he said all they did was get
a voltmeter and they measured the
voltage says no it's got enough voltage
is nothing wrong with the battery and of
course anybody who knows anything about
batteries you don't just measure the
voltage that's where you start you do a
low test you got to see how many
cranking amps it is there are a bunch of
tests that can be done all I did
basically was testing the voltage and
the testing of the amps and showed that
the amp was low even though it was a new
battery it was just the defect and he
needed a new battery
they gave him another battery haha but
he had to jump through hoops to get
another battery
they cost one year as big as Walmart
they're the largest single company from
number of employees they have and
they're third in the world for anything
only the United States Defense
Department and the Chinese Defense
Department has more employees than
Walmart so it's so big they're certainly
ganna have a problem with quality
control a few years ago a guy came with
this new pickup it was about six months
old and he brought me a battery to test
so I tested it
said hey the batteries got reverse
polarity the positive and the negative
terminal were actually even though it
said positive one negative the other it
was built wrong so it was backwards the
positive was actually negative negative
was a positive
so when he hooked up to his truck boom
burnout a bunch of stuff about the
matter at Walmart and they said oh will
you put the battery wrong in your truck
it's not our fault you just installed it
backwards well after I just as I said no
you installed it correctly it said it
was built wrong now I have to admit even
I probably would have done that because
when I buy a battery I know you're
chilly stick ammeter to see if it's made
right that the positive is positive
negative negative I'm assuming that plus
is plus and minus is minus and I put it
in carefully so the positive goes in a
positive terminal and negative a
negative but after that guy brought me
an ad for a few months I was checking
all the batteries with my meter to make
sure they were positive and not negative
and they weren't built wrong but I never
did find another one that was built
wrong I do have to say they have
insurance and they had to pay a bunch of
money for it it was thousands of dollars
the damage it did to the new pickup
truck to the computer system but people
that are working there from my
experience here in Texas a lot of don't
even care I went to Walmart wants to buy
big screen TV I was ignored I mean we
were talking about a thousand dollar TV
right they just ignore me so dad with us
I walked on I bought it on Amazon which
actually I liked better because they
delivered to our house free so I didn't
care you have to carry the giant thing
Amazon ended up as a better deal
language but they lost the sale on that
one because of lazy unmotivated
employees now with the complexity of
modern-day cars even changing a battery
out can cause problems that's why I
advise people to use one of these
batteries memory savers this plugs in
the OBD part then you just hook this up
to any 12-volt power supply so when you
disconnect the battery in place of
battery it doesn't reset a bunch of
stuff a lot more than your idea won't
work cuz you got to put in a special
code and if you don't have the code and
they put a battery in and you got to run
through hoops to find out where the code
is from the dealer prove you own it get
the code and then input it it's a lot
worse I had a customer the mini dead
battery changed at Walmart and they
brought to me it's the Scotty my
sunroofs not working right the windows
aren't working right so idle and kind of
funky and I said what did they
put one of these memory savers in they
said I don't think so I had to reset my
clock and everything I said well then
they didn't do this because I'm modern
cars like the many that's basically BMW
technology you have to know what you're
doing when you're working on them and if
you just change the battery
you're gonna have to reset a whole bunch
of stuff and often it requires a dealer
level scan tool when I get one of those
cars come in I've got to hook up my
$5,000 top-of-the-line scan tool and
start messing with resetting stuff
because just changing the battery can
cause a problem if you don't put one of
these obd memory savers in before you
change the battery now they sell tires
have competitive prices on tires there's
no arguing that if you're gonna buy
tires you'll buy from a place that knows
tires that has mechanics that can do
front-end alignments doesn't know how to
balance them correctly you don't just
want some guy was making $11 an hour
putting tires on your car and saying
okay it's done when I send customers the
cotton brothers that's my front end
alignment shop that's half a mile over
there they look at everything first they
look at the old tires and they'll see oh
well this is worn here the struts are
worn or the tow in is wrong and a front
end alignment they're not just going to
throw tires I'm they're gonna wear out
fast because there's another problem
these places don't have the trained
personnel to do that or the equipment to
do alignments to do it correctly even
though they got good prices hey I'm not
a fan of taking your car there and
having tires put on realize these days
with the complexity of modern cars
things are so complex you want somebody
who understands the whole car when
they're working on it and yeah I
personally seen horror stories were
somebody went to Walmart to get their
oil changed and they screwed up the
drain plug and not was leaking and in
one case it was on all-wheel drive Isuzu
and it was like a $900 job replacing the
oil pan to fix it right you really want
to have to deal with that stuff man as a
kid I started changing it all cuz hey I
didn't have much money
I wanted to keep the engine going but
I'm not gonna pay somebody to do a
simple job like that I do it myself and
I advise people to do it themselves but
if you don't do it yourself have a
qualified guy doing it if you're going
to any big-box store it doesn't matter
if it's Walmart or Lowe's you do not go
there expecting any type of great
customer service they
just pay their employees too little one
of the biggest complaints I saw online
from employees of Walmart that worked on
their Auto Center was you didn't get
promoted because you did a good job you
got promoted
if you nuzzled up to the manager and it
was more of a buddy system that it was a
merit system, great place to buy stuff
that has good prices but I would not
send people there to have their cars
worked on, so if you never want to miss
another one of my new car repair videos,
remember to ring that Bell
