Tarkblog

I used to love changing the oil in my car (and, after getting married, my wife’s car). It was a lazy Sunday afternoon task and it gave me a chance to do something different.

But anymore, it’s just so much easier to take it to the oil change place. In fact, the one nearby work advertises $18.99 oil change special. Recently, I visited and attempted to purchase this oil change.

First, realize that this only applies to their house brand 10W-30 oil (TropArtic brand, which as best as I can tell stands for “made in North Korea”). Now, my car is a little picky in specifying that it should have 5W-30. The only difference is the low end temperature viscosity, with 5W being able to handle lower temperatures. Not wanting to tempt fate, I told him to use the 5W-30.

So, the whole thing proceeds. I told him not to bother washing the windows, since I would do it anyway (a lie, but they do such a terrible job at these things that I didn’t want my windows to end up dirtier than they already were).

About 8 minutes later, I get the bill. $39 and change. Here’s how it played out.

Apparently the 5W30 house blend oil is $26.99, not $18.99 like the 10W30. So, for a slightly different viscosity grade I get an $8 surcharge. As best as I can remember, they’re the exact same price at the auto parts store.

Then there was a $5 fee for removing the skid plate on the bottom of my car that covers the oil pan. They had never charged me for this before, so I didn’t realize it would be applicable.

Also, there was a $2 disposal fee.

And, since my car has a large displacement V8, there was a few extra dollars charged for going over 5 quarts of oil.

All in all, $39+. That’s over double what the sign was advertising.

Crikey!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Mind, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.