Oil change shops caught cheating under the hood

If you hit the road for Thanksgiving this week, you can tune up your car with a new oil

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, and of course you expect to get what you pay for when you walk into the shop, but KXAN Investigator Brian Collister found That is not always the case. This happens here in Central Texas, Brian, that's right, you know this is a synthetic oil, it lasts longer and costs three to four times as much as conventional, old, old oil. Now you can tell just by looking that you can't really tell him. Besides, that's why we infiltrated this investigation with a hidden camera thanks to a mechanic who showed us that you don't always get the oil you pay for.

This is indisputable evidence from a laboratory that shows that instead of synthetic you gave us cheap conventional. oil every time, six times, I guess they saw the scam that Terry and Rowe used to work here at this oil store called True Balance in Round Rock for four months, they tell us Castro or Mobil 1 and it's not cheap oil and why they do that it's money, profits, all for profit, he says he took this photo of the expensive jugs of Mobil 1 synthetic oil that you see when you walk into the store, but what customers don't see is this photo, he says shows a really balanced employee filling those same jugs with cheap regular oil trying to tone.

They are selling Dom Perignon and they are giving you a Miller Lite with a Dom Perignon sticker on it. Are they filling a full synthetic jug with regular oil? so we send our undercover producer to

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the oil in your car, yes, I want to get the best you have. We made the mobile app for 30 cents which, according to that, is 95. Right after the oil change, it's time to draw a sample of the oil. We placed the balance in our test car and took it to the Alcor laboratory. The gasoline laboratory technicians analyze the sample through scientific tests that will tell us what type of oil we obtained.

This is what Mobil 1 looks like. The blue line shows its chemical composition not even close to the The red line shows the true balance of the oil it sold to us. This is not the only true balance. It's a chain. We also go undercover and sample at other stores in Elgin, on North Lamar, and here on West Killing and First Street in South Austin, where this mechanic is. called Jimmy changes our oil not just once but on two separate visits welcome Betty excuse the roofing better what is that who are synthetic oh that's the best they have yeah okay both times Jimmy tells us we're getting premium synthetic oil neither A single sample you sent us performed as we would expect for the synthetic oils claimed on the invoice, have you ever raised this concern with them and if so what did they say?

We're just doing this for a while, you know, just a little own, we're just getting started, we're dealing with being legit Brandon Harris used to call it a lick, you know, he's doing a lick that's like a street code for ripping you off. Brandon Harris is the owner of true balance Terry says he tells employees do this, hello Brandon, from you, how you doing well. Brian calls from a pie and says I met Harris at the West Slaughterhouse to ask him what I thought was a simple enough question for him to answer what kind of oil is put in these. cars, you're going to be old Vinny's lawyers, we use an Altima one bender, give us the injection, the wobble won't help you with that cell phone you put in cars to make it synthetic.

I don't understand, I would like to help you understand. I showed you our lab results, we've been to your four locations here, in fact we've been to two of them twice, well, and you sold us high quality, high value premium synthetic oil, we sent it to a lab in Dallas and you gave us the cheap conventional oil, you didn't give us what we paid for, that will be correct, we say you gave you synthetic oil, why would that happen? I don't know, I mean, we should have given you a proven synthetic oil, up, you get what If you ask us, you'll give it to us, but I don't know, the problem is that what you give Custer.

We've spoken to a former employee who says you do this to all your customers. No, we know this is just a way for you to make more profits no, no, that's not how we run business here sir, you say you're going to have to talk to your employees, that's when we see the guy who changed our oil, we paid you twice for the synthetic oil, but we sent the oil to a lab in Dallas and you gave us cheap oil, not synthetic, you did it, you filled it, we have you on camera, what would you like to say about that?

No, Jimmy has no explanation, Jimmy, can we talk? Can we talk to you about why you gave us? Jimmy greases us and finally locks himself inside this bathroom to get away from our camera. As for the former True Balance mechanic who exposed this whole oil mess, I feel really bad for the customer and I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. he didn't have enough