An independent mechanic has said that a customer came to his workshop with a 2012 Range Rover Sport that needed an air conditioning fix that a workshop had quoted would cost the owner $1,800 to fix. Yet this mechanic said he could do it for less than half of that, but it led to a tricky situation involving his landlord and his son.
Richard’s Auto Repair (@richardvilla45), an independent shop, posted about the situation on their TikTok account in a video that’s recently gone viral. At the time of writing, it had over 22,000 views, and it went into a lot of detail as to what had been going on.
The vehicle in question was a 2012 Range Rover Sport, which ironically actually belonged to the mechanic’s landlord’s son. The owner had taken it to a shop to get a quote on the A/C repair and was told it would cost nearly $2,000 to fix the problems.
With such a high price tag, the father then told his son to take it to his tenant’s workshop, which is Richard’s Auto Repair, as he would be able to do it. While it turned out that the other shop had assessed the work correctly, the price they quoted soon seemed incredibly high.
What Happened to the 2012 Range Rover?
@richardvilla45♬ original sound – Richard’s auto Repair
The TikTok video from Richard also showed the issues that tenants can sometimes face from landlords. Richard wanted to diagnose the car, but the owner refused to pay for it. Despite this, Richard relented and did it for free and found that the assessment of the problem was correct. They said there was a fault with the A/C compressor.
But they had charged $800 for the compressor and then $1,000 in labor to replace it. Richard had to set his own price, and with it set to take 4.6 hours to replace the compressor at $140 an hour, Richard said it would cost $644 in labor. That was still less than the $1,000 quoted by the previous shop, so the owner would be saving a lot of money.
The situation, however, was slightly complicated by the fact that the customer was his landlord’s son. He said he wanted to pay even less for the repair than he was quoted. “He says it’s too much money to give him a good deal,” Richard said. That led to a slightly tricky conversation regarding rent, but Richard argued that the two are completely separate from each other and should not coexist.
The Mechanic Seemed Very Frustrated by the Situation
Richard had clearly become quite frustrated by the situation. What made it worse was that the customer had his own parts, and the new compressor was a cheap one from Amazon. It was installed into the Range Rover, and it did work. “But how long is it going to last? And then when it fails, you’re going to come back and say, ‘ What did you do?” asked Richard.
The whole ordeal left Richard quite surprised, and it did the same to his viewers too. “Never allow a customer to set your prices,” wrote one. They argued that if you do it once, then they will keep doing it. “Tell him you will keep it full price, but have him take it off your rent instead,” said another. Richard himself had concerns over his rent renewal, so it was an incredibly tricky situation for him to find himself in.