Canadian Tire East Store #629

My boyfriend and I took our out of Province vehicle to Canadian Tire for an out of Province Inspection. When we were greeted at the service counter, the fellow was fairly polite and knowledgeable; however he couldn't answer a question we had - so he went and got the mechanic that would be performing said inspection. This gentlemen, Greg, I believe his name is - was VERY rude. I had gotten 2-3 words into my sentence and he started interrupting me - telling me "No", I couldn't do what I was inquiring about. Which would have been totally fine... But I thought this seemed unlikely, so, I attempted to continue and complete my sentence and ask the question I had. Continuously being interrupted, I finally got the sentence out and he realized what I was actually asking - to which he retracted his first answer and said "Oh, yeah, yeah you could do that - no problem! Sorry it's been a long day..." It was 7:54am, the shop opens at 7:30am. Regardless, I didn't find that an excuse for his incredible rudeness. Moving on, we left our vehicle there. It was completed quickly and we went to pick it up later that day. When we got the report back there was a few things we found very odd. The mechanic failed our vehicle, which is not an issue at all - why he failed it, however, is an issue. The mechanic wrote down in his report to us, that the rear windows on the four door vehicle did not roll down. We had the windows down the day before, so we found this highly unlikely. When we looked at it, we noticed the child lock was actually on. This would mean that if you attempted to open the windows from the back doors, they would not open. It's a safety feature for children, that nearly all vehicles with electric windows have. I was surprised that he did not check that, further more, I'm surprised he did not check the windows before hand - from the master switch located on the driver door. Second, the mechanic wrote down that out "u-joint connected to the propeller shaft" was worn. Okay, that's fine. But if you know anything about cars, you'd know there is no such thing as a propeller shaft in a vehicle. It's called a CV axle. Further more, the vehicle we brought (2003 ***) is an all wheel drive. It does not have u-joints, it has a constant velocity joint. If you google images of the two, the difference is fairly obvious. This was something we're unaware of that needed attention - so we bought the part to replace it.
We took it to my boyfriends work place, he's a mechanic... We took the constant velocity joint out, cleaned it up and noticed that - it's actually in really good condition. We took it to another mechanic, ***, they specialize in ***'s and similar makes - he said the joint looks brand new and had we not told him it was out of our car, he would have thought it was straight from the box. So, we re-greased it and put it back in our vehicle. Third, the mechanic at the shop said that our "right lower ball joint has lateral movement". We found this extremely difficult to believe as we just replaced that part! When my boyfriend moved to Saskatchewan, in May, he found the shop - ***, that I previously mentioned and took his vehicle there for a look over to see if there was any parts that needed attention. *** told us that the bushings, ball joints, CV axle and a couple other things needed replaced. We bought the parts and repaired the vehicle - I have receipts to prove this as well. The ball joint your mechanic failed had 83km on it. When we were checking the car, we took the assembly apart - checked it, re-installed it and wiped the dirt off. There was nothing wrong with the part, so we didn't replace it. The mechanic also failed our hatch for not opening, which was fine - we replaced the handle, it's functioning now. He said there was something leaking, when we inspected it - we found nothing. So we didn't change it. The mechanic also said our camber was off and we needed an alignment but he couldn't do the alignment because the ball joint needed replaced first.
We brought the car back to Canadian Tire this morning for a re-inspection. The mechanic passed everything except the leaking part, which we got him to replace. We took the child lock off the windows, to ensure he'd be able to figure them out - but other than that we did nothing except clean the parts he failed - on top of that, the alignment he thought we needed he simply stated "I'm not going to worry about it, I've seen ***'s come from the factory more off than that." Not only that - but the re-inspection is supposed to be free with-in thirty days. We had the vehicle back with-in a week and we were charged additionally - approx. $60.00 - "because the car went back on the lift". First of all, to do a proper re-inspection - you'd have to put all vehicles back on the lift. So why would you advertise a free re-inspection with-in 30 days?...