Shooting The Parts Cannon Is A Bad Idea

Imagine going to the doctor and saying “Doc, I have diagnosed myself and determined I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and all I want you to do is give me a prescription for it, no need doing any tests or running any diagnostic procedures.” The doctor would treat you alright…..for a mental disorder because you would have to be crazy to do that. The internet is a wonderful thing, for leading people in the wrong direction. People use it to get a little information about something, choose what they want to believe, convert that to instant knowledge and in a few key strokes become experts on the subject. Unfortunately, I see this occur too often when it comes to some car owners.

The automotive parts industry is projected to sell $148 billion in 2019. That’s $148,000,000,000 and does not include labor. it’s suspected that up to 25% of that will be parts sold based on miss diagnostics. Either Google told the car owner what was wrong or the parts store read the check engine light code and guessed at the cause. That’s $29.6 billion (it looks like this $29,600,000,000). I’m not a big fan of wasting money and I hate to see people throw their money down the drain. The simplest, and easiest way to avoid this waste is to have any problem with your car properly diagnosed first. Diagnostics at my shop is often less than an hour of labor.

“Shooting the parts cannon” is a phrase used when people or bad shops keeping installing parts and hoping for luck. I think it should just be called the money wasting cannon. Be the wise consumer, have any issues with your car properly diagnosed and repaired, don’t shoot the cannon.