“As someone raised by a lifelong dealership parts manager… I’ve never had service done at a dealership and I never buy the maintenance package lol.”
A woman took her Jeep into a mechanic’s shop for a second opinion after the dealership told her she needed new brake pads. The second opinion mechanic found an entirely different reality under the hood.
TikTok creator Ricky (@rickymadeja92) posted a video with his Jeep dealership complaint on Dec. 13. He writes in the on-screen caption, “Customer was told by a Jeep dealership that she had 2mm of pad life left in the rear brakes. She brought it to us. I pulled it apart, and this is what I found.”
In the video, Ricky shows a rotor that looks in fairly good condition, and a brake pad that is quite a bit thicker than 2 mm. For the caption, Ricky writes, “They don’t call them stealerships for nothing. The grease is still purple.”
In the comments section, viewers reacted to the scene in Ricky’s shop and shared their own stories of being told untruths by car dealership service departments.
“Thank god there’s people like you out there that help us out for real,” said one viewer.
“You just made a customer for life by showing her, nice,” said a second person.
A third person said, “I had a dealership tell me my caliper was bad. I said, ‘The caliper I replaced four days ago?’ They doubled down.”
Someone else noted, “For anyone not familiar: That’s practically a brand-new brake pad. It has tens of thousands of miles left on it.”
Another person joked, “Two millimeters, two centimeters. It’s all the same, right?”
This guide shows a diagram for determining wear on a brake pad. The light-wear side ranges from 12 mm to 8 mm, the moderate-wear section in the middle spans from 6 mm to 4 mm, and the “service soon” side ranges from 3 mm to 2 mm. That is when technicians will usually recommend a replacement. Drivers will also get a clue when they need new brake pads because worn ones will start squeaking.
When pads get down to 2 mm, it is a safety risk to keep driving for too long. That’s because thin brake pads are more likely to fail, and that can cause a collision.
A Reddit user asked about this in a post to r/MechanicAdvice about five years ago. One technician said, “Two millimeters will usually go about another oil change. Generally, we emphasize them there.”
Another person argued, “You could likely drive on brakes with no pads left, but it wouldn’t be safe. Why would you wait to change them if your pads are so thin now? You are not doing yourself [any] favors by waiting 2K more miles.”
And Ricky is hardly the first mechanic to disagree with the way dealership service departments diagnose vehicles and charge customers. A former dealership service tech wrote a confessional for Edmunds, saying safety issues are routinely played up to get customers to agree to unnecessary repairs.
Motor1 contacted Ricky via TikTok comment and direct message for comment. We also contacted Jeep’s parent company, Stellantis, via email for comment. This story will be updated should either party respond.
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