Wrong diagnoses by one repair shop makes us all look bad

We have a customer that comes to us from about 1 1/2 hours away this should speak volumes about our work. I mean after all there are shops much closer to this customer that I'm sure could do the work on their vehicles. But the story here is what happened when this customer made a choice to goto a shop closer to their home and is a perfect example of why this industry CAN'T be trusted. Thats right I said automotive shops CAN'T be trusted. (Of course I'm not including our shop in the not trusted part.) As a service manger I see this type of thing almost daily! and it makes me sick at what some repair shops are doing!

You may want to read this article here about an issue with GM intake manifolds before you read the story.

The Story: The customer has one of the GM vehicles that the article talks about. About one year ago the customer brought in the vehicle and it was leaking coolant, just as the article states can happen. And indeed after our testing we found that the intake manifold gasket was leaking. So long story short the customer was given an estimate for the needed repairs and that estimate was also inline with the cost that the article talks about. Before I go on one thing that can also leak from a bad intake manifold gasket is "engine vacuum" that is created by a running engine and the air being pulled through the motor. When there is a large enough vacuum leak the engine will also run bad it can mis,backfire and have a lack of power. So Monday morning I get a phone call from this customer (Got to love Monday mornings thats another blog LOL) This customer tells me that the car started running really bad last Thursday it was running so badly that they didn't want to take it on the 1 1/2 hour drive it was going to take to get it here. So they took it to a repair shop near their home. After this repair shop said they diagnosed the issue they asked my customer if the intake manifold had ever been off. They of course pulled their paperwork from the work we did a year ago and took it to the shop so the "shop manager" or "service writer" could look it over. They were then told: "Why didn't the other shop replace the fuel injector o-rings when this work was done? Those o-rings are bad and need to be replaced so we will have to take the intake manifold back off and basically do the whole job over!" to this they added the estimate was going to be around $1,000.00! Of course even though I think this customer trusts our work thats when the phone call came to me. "Dan! bla bla bla Why didn't you guys do this when you did the intake work?!?!?!" So I got them to bring the vehicle up to us today. Oh by the way in order for them to be able to pick their vehicle up and bring it to us they had to pay the other shop a $100.00 diagnosis fee! FOR WHAT IS MY QUESTION??
Here is why I say that we pulled the car in to the shop and I kid you not found the issue within 15 min. of opening the hood!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What was it you might ask?? It was a .50 broken vacuum hose!! NOT THE $1,000.00 repair the other shop wanted to charge for!

I have this message to send out to any Automotive Repair shop owners or managers that may read this. I for one am sick of seeing customers get taken for a ride! Stop ripping people off!! All you are doing is is giving those of us trying to make an honest living a bad name! KNOCK IT OFF!!

Oh and for those reading even though by rights I could have charged this customer something for this repair I let him go with out charging him. Thats how you treat customers!

Everyone have a great day!
~Dan