Rereading my post, I realized that I should have probably said 'thousands'.

Check this one out. A nice young Hispanic guy came in for an inspection. It failed, and we offered to diagnose it for him. He declined, paid for the inspection, and left.

[Failed VIR]

The next day, he returned for his free retest, claiming that he had fixed it. I retested it with the same exact routine, on the same exact equipment, and, lo and behold, it appears that he did exactly what he said!

[After "repairs" VIR]

I did NOT do anything differently from the first test to the next. I did not participate in the diagnostic or repair process whatsoever. I have no idea what he did to 'fix' it; maybe a fresh set of Bosch "supers" and/or some "Sea Foam", but that's just conjecture.

Scenarios very similar to this are weekly, and sometimes daily occurrences at my shop. I can easily imagine this kind of nonsense having a negative effect on my FuPR, but what can I do about it? When I am asked to re-test a vehicle, I re-test the vehicle. It passes or it fails, with no personal prejudices. I added the sarcastic comment at the bottom of the second test, for those sarcasm connoisseurs amongst us.

The guy thanked us and went about his merry way; I don't think that he 'got' my comment, but English probably wasn't his first language anyway. He is a nice guy, and I wish him well; I doubt that he would have been offended by the comment anyway, since he got what he needed.

Sincerely,

Michael Barry
Technician
Quick Stop Smog & More
Sacramento, California, USA

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