I know jackshit about cars pls halp...

>My mom took her minivan Walmart for an oil change a month ago and It's been leaking since

I used wal-mart oil/tire/battery centers for years (about 12 years in a row) and never a problem with them here in washington state. Always got full synthetic and used fram ultra filters which they substitute in at low cost since it's an upgrade.

Why did I go to wal-mart with my new car? All my cars were bought as new cars, so I of course know 100% of the service record. My previous new car was bought from my local stealership and I got my oil changes there. One day, they said I needed a new oil pan since the plug was stripped and it must have happened from some other shop. I know it had to be the stealership screwing me, but I cannot prove they did it. It's the perfect crime for them. They do not use rethreaded plugs. They only replace parts as their "repair". I was stuck since without oil, I can either tow it from their shop to go to another one, or have them replace the oil pan that they stripped. 100% of the oil service was from them, but of course I cannot prove I never went to anywhere else and paid cash. I am disappointed by that stealership that places money first, and customers third or fourth.

After that, I switched to wal-mart oil change service. Now, I am still captive to the dealer lubricating any under chassis parts and the doors. But since I do the doors and almost everything under chassis is booted or has seals (lifetime lubrication seals), I stopped listening to the stealership's FUD tactics of your warranty can be voided with improper maintenance. Wal-mart does the oil and filter and has yet to strip the plug while the dealer stripped my car in five changes. Maybe the stealership mech wanted to meet his bonus quota that month?

Dude. You had their oil filter on your car and you say you can't prove it was them? They literally did your last oil change. It was their fault. You an other people don't realize this that when a shop fucks your shit up it's still their fault because you got it changed there last. As a former Walmart oil changer I can vouch for this. If we stripped a plug or anything our fram orange filter was on the car last and that makes it our fault. There fore we pay for a new oil pan.

They steadfastly denied it was them. That's how stealerships are. They know it is next to impossible to prove if they choose to not admit to anything and stonewall on anything they can. It is worth fighting in court spending a bunch of money to recover a smaller amount of money?

stealerships pretty much never admit to anything.

they force you to prove it knowing that many things cannot ever be proven in court.

almost no one will go to court for the added expense of both time and money and they know that too. so stealerships pull the bluff game pushing you to the edge.

ezpz, I report the fraud to my credit card company, the payment gets stopped. I have done this twice to dealers when they have tried to fuck me, and it worked both times.

>Audi develops boost leak, way too busy with work to deal with it. Only local VAG shop is VW dealer.
>Call them to see if they are comfortable working on it "Oh yeah user, no problem, bring it in.
>End of day "We found a fixed your boost leak, it will be $150 for parts and labor"
>Pick up the car, I can tell the boost leak is not fixed driving out of the dealer driveway
>Call them up the next day "That $150 was only for diagnosis and we couldn't find it"
>K
>Talk to a one man independent shop I liked that doesn't do German, they recommend me to a independent VAG shop two towns over
>Independent shop finds the torn hose, replaces with samco for $125
>Call up CC company, report fraud, immediate stop payment to dealer and receive $150 credit to my account. Submit my documents and argument the next day
>Dealer calls me two weeks later absolutely furious, I tell him to go fuck himself for wasting my time.
>Investigation settles in my favor

I can greentext the other time if anons are interested

Source of oil is clearly above the oil filter. Its not walmarts fault your car is apiece of shit. I really hope you and your lying ass whore mother get stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere with your garbage ass minivan. Maybe if your mom hadnt bought a slanteyed microdick chink built piece of shit she wouldnt be having this problem. Best bet is to scrap it and buy something decent. I can assure your the transmission is on its last legs. Honda engines are pretty notorious for burning oil too, theres actually a class action lawsuit out.

Interested

>Source of oil is clearly above the oil filter
No one is disputing that. But the tech could've cracked the block by hammering off the old filter or overtightening the new one.

also interested

wow pretty smart user here. I like your style, just get the bank (credit union in your case) on your side.

>Its not walmarts fault your car is apiece of shit. I
Don't need to blame OP. It's natural human psychology to blame oil system failure on the previous recent oil system maintenance done to the car. Of course, that forced the wal-mart techs into the awkward position of trying to find out what the problem is (for free) in order to avoid being fired by the notoriously stingy wal-mart management.

From the SINGLE picture as shown, at least the car problem is not: a stripped oil drain plug. The totally soaked boot suggests the oil leak is from higher up well above the oil filter. But without more pictures showing other parts of the engine wet with oil, OP is not furnishing more info that can allow people in this thread to furnish an opinion of what is going on with this engine.

OP should furnish more photos from his cellphone of the engine area above the oil filter.

are you sure it's an oil leak and not a powersteering leak?

>But the tech could've cracked the block by hammering off the old filter
Techs crack engine blocks by removing oil filters? That's new to me. That seems more like grasping at straws to find some way to blame wal-mart no matter how far-fetched the reason.

>Have a Mitsubishi (oops)
>EFI Fuse blows when you drive forward, but only if you give it more than %25 throttle. You can absolutely wail on it in reverse with out blowing the fuse.
>Must be a short, Crawl all over the car looking for the short
>Still stupid busy with work, don't want to trouble my independent mechanic guy with a PITA electrical problem, take it to the Mitsu dealer.
>$150 for diagnosis
>Another $150 for more diagnosis
>A week later, "Sir your truck completely died, your ECU is fried, a new one is $1200, although we can't guarantee that will resolve the problem"
>Go to dealer with a bag of 30A fuses, I am absolutely livid, there is no way in fuck it is the ECU
>Decide to make a scene in front of a bunch of customers
>Me: "Give me my keys! You don't know what the fuck you are doing"
>Dealer: "You have to pay us for diagnostics, and it's not going to start"
>Slam down my credit card already knowing I'm going to be calling my cc company 10 minutes from now.
>Get keys, storm off to truck
>Service writer is following me outside and a bunch of customers are watching " Sir, its not going to start! Sir, it is the ECU it is not going to start. You're wasting your time!"
>Me "Watch this, dickhead"
>Open hood, pop in new fuse, put the key in, look directly at him while cranking. It fires right up.
>Drive past him and all the customers watching, get about a mile down the road before I blow that fuse. 4 fuses later and I have it home.
>Call up the CC, tell them my story. Get instant credit for $300
>Take it to my independent shop, takes him 16 hours to find the short (one of the fuel injector wires on the back of the engine), only bills me for 5 or 6.
>Send invoice from independent shop to CC company, they finish their investigation and I get to keep my $300.
>Mitsu dealer has the bright idea not to call me back.

Just to add the two keys to this working are

>You have to give the original party a chance to make things right.

>You have to furnish proof from a 3rd party that the original party was incompetent.
If you take it to an independent shop let them know what is going on. In my experience they hate dumb mechanics as much as you do and they will happily write detailed notes on the invoice that will help you prove your position.

I guess unlike you, I am one of the many "sheep" the chevy Stealership makes a killing profit even from mistakes the stealership caused.

You don't have to be a sheeple, you can stand up on your hind legs.

All I have going for me is:
>Personally done lots of maintenance and repairs on my own cars. If I have the time I don't take them to shops.
>I have a Les Grossman sized temper and I get extremely pissed when I know somebody is swindling me

Don't take that to mean I am a stingy dickhead though. I would have been happy to pay the dealers if they had been honest. I was happy to pay the independent shops, and I would have been fine with paying them a little extra because I know in the case of one of them, being a one man business is not easy.

One more greentext, this happened before the other two

>Same Audi
>Climate control packs it in, also failing smog due to high HC
>Take it to a closer VAG shop that specializes in old Audis
>After three days they have no idea what the fuck is going on and give it back to me no charge. Wanted to replace both cats with used cats for $1,200, or new ones at $2,400. They weren't trying to screw me, OEM German cats are expensive.
>Take it to the dealer, "Is it a V6 or I4?"
>me: "Its a UrS4, I5 Turbo"
>dealer: "They didn't make S4s in 92'"
>me: "Yes they did, check this out" I open the hood
>service writer silently writes down the VIN runs off then comes back "that will be $150 to look at it, sir"
>Don't hear anything back for 4 days
>Dealer calls "We found the problem with the climate control, a wire popped out of a connector, I took my tech hours to find it but the fix was easy so we'll cover that under the diagnostic charge. Also we got it to pass smog on our machine here. You need to get the cats really hot, drive it aggressively, get it straight onto the machine and it will pass.
>me: "So what do I owe you total?"
>dealer: "$150 for diagnosis, that is all"

The climate control never gave me trouble again and their smog advice worked. Of course that dealership closed a couple months later. An honest dealer is like an ice cube in the desert.

>some way to blame wal-mart
It started leaking right after the Walmart service.

>An honest dealer is like an ice cube in the desert.

Which means you are forced to go to a stealership for warranty service. Sounds fine but my stealership likes to find ways to at least get a diagnostic fee in there in addition to the warranty service. It always starts off with their patented "A diagnostic examination is necessary to determine if the problem is covered under warranty."

They always want to work on the problem out of warranty, so they find creative ways to disallow even the powerful 3 year bumper to bumper warranty coverage. That is how bad this stealership is. The employees really really want their bonuses and have all sold out. Or the ones that didn't sell out get pushed out for inadequate performance to meet monetary goals.

call a lawyer and sue. make them pay for their fuck up

What's an oil leak on a 180,000 mile car worth?

i dont know if you can get money out of it but they sure have to pay for their fuck up. it doesnt matter how old the car is.

>call a lawyer and sue.

you can't sue until you know what the problem and cause are.

AND:
Oh, it was leaking before they brought it into the shop.

>Had lubeshop replace my windshield wipers
>Transmission started slipping the next day

wtf those asshole broke my car!

>it was leaking before they brought it into the shop.
No it wasn't.

might be the oil filter, but it looks like its coming from higher than that

are you sure? i was a mechanic for many years and the amount of times people bitched us out for unrelated stuff a week after work was retarded

one time after a oil change someone started bitching about an oil leak and blamed us, turned out to be the oil pressure switch right above the filter. getting bitched out for shit i didnt do was one of the biggest reason i quit being a mechanic

>t was leaking before
Sometimes the judge accepts coincidence, but usually small claims court is about Innocent until proven guilty.

If you have an independent machanics signed report that says the oil filter was improperly installed, then that would be what the judge considers proof along with pictures of the double gasket or stripped threads.

>pictures of the double gasket or stripped threads.
That is easy and cheap to get.