I thought I found the best situation in the world when I started using my current mechanic.
He was my former neighbor’s son who had just finished a stint in trade school learning to be a car mechanic and worked most days at a tire and lube business in our small town.
After doing such a good job replacing my brakes for me once, I hired him for more and more car related maintenance and repair tasks. He successfully replaced the radiator in an old vehicle of mine that my wife wanted to sell to a junkyard. Then we had another extra car to give to our kids to use whenever they wanted to. While our kids didn’t want to drive an old car, it was better than not having one at all. Unfortunately, this young mechanic didn’t work out for the best as time went on. He made a costly error when trying to replace a catalytic converter in my SUV and it forced me to take the car to an expensive auto shop to fix the error. When I wanted the kid to replace the air conditioner a few months later, he outright refused. He hadn’t replaced an air conditioner compressor in a car before and he was worried about making a mistake with the installation process. I give him credit for acknowledging his limitations and having the courage and maturity to refuse a job he couldn’t successfully do on his own. Sadly, it meant that my wife and I had to pay more than we expected to get the car’s air conditioner fixed in the long run.
heating and cooling service