Today I saw myself quoted on an email list about a customer who had been up-sold synthetic oil at another shop. Sounds like a good topic.
If your car’s manufacturer specifies synthetic oil that’s what you must use. When we service the car we put in the oil specified by the car’s manufacturer at the minimum. In many cases we put in a better oil.
In this case it was an older car that didn’t require synthetic oil. The customer went elsewhere where they were up-sold a certain brand of synthetic oil. The shop even put a real official looking sticker under the hood that said “only use x brand synthetic oil”. The customer had no idea they had used synthetic oil but remembered the oil change was “really expensive”.
In this case the use of synthetic oil will not likely add significant life to the car. It’s driven mainly in the city and regularly changing the oil will add more value. When synthetic oil first came out there was talk about not changing back to conventional oil because it would cause seals to leak. Wives’s tale or truth; I don’t know but we’ve never been able to attribute a leak to switching back. That was a long time ago, today the oils are without a doubt compatible with each other.
Synthetic oil is a better product; if you want to use it start when the car is new. Switching over in a high mile car won’t make it a low mileage engine. We removed the bogus sticker and put our oil in.
This is where it gets more complicated. There is a third oil, called blended or synthetic blend. It has some of the properties of synthetic and a price closer to conventional oil. We stopped using conventional oil several years ago. Our most basic service comes with blended oil. At most shops and the quick lubes this is an upgrade or add on. At Hometown it’s just part of the “Old Time Value” we put in every job.
If you have any questions about motor oil or what your vehicle takes; send us an email.
I just got back from my nightly walk with Kobi. It’s 20 degrees out but we still did 1.5 miles. While we were walking it reminded me of the cold snap we had a couple weeks back.
The first cold snap of prior years bought in a flood of dead batteries. Marginal batteries give out in the extreme cold. Arriving in the morning we’d find the cars that had been towed in during the night and the parade of tow trucks would continue through the day.
That morning I was surprised to find that no cars had been towed in during the night. There also were no messages on the machine. Unusual, but I was sure they were coming. I was wrong, they didn’t come. At the end of the day we had only done three batteries.Maybe it wasn’t really that cold? I called our battery distributor to reorder the 3 batteries and learned their sales were through the roof that day. They couldn’t keep up with the deliveries. Why did we only sell 3 batteries?
I needed to find out why. I knew our customer base had grown so that wasn’t it. A quick look at battery sales for 2009 showed they were up, so that wasn’t it. Another look at the data showed that battery sales used to spike in the extreme cold and extreme heat, I knew that; but in 2009 the spikes were gone. Battery sales were pretty even all year. Very interesting but why?
What happened? In 2008 I made testing the battery part of our regular maintenance service. We use a very accurate, computerized battery tester to identify a worn out battery before it causes a symptom the customer would notice and before it leaves the customer stranded. My goal was to provide a better service. Did I expect results like this? Honestly, I didn’t.
As this case study shows, preventive maintenance works. It saves money, time, aggravation and inconvenience.
If you have your car serviced at a quick lube, ask them to test your battery; they don’t offer this service. If we service your car, you don’t need to ask, we’ll test it at your next regular maintenance service.
