Quote from joldancox on April 10, 2026, 2:33 pm

I'm honestly feeling pretty frustrated and I think I need to learn a lesson from what just happened to me. I have a 2016 Mazda 6 that has been running perfectly fine until last week when I noticed a small oil stain on my parking spot at home. It wasn't a huge puddle, just a few drops, but I didn't want to ignore it and end up with a bigger problem later. So I took it to a garage that was close to my apartment in Barsha because it was convenient and the guy seemed friendly enough when I walked in. He said he would do a full inspection and call me with what he finds. Two hours later he calls me and says I need a new valve cover gasket, new oil pan gasket, and something about a timing cover leak, and the total quote was almost 4000 dirhams. I was shocked because the car doesn't smoke, doesn't overheat, and drives completely fine. I told him I would think about it and picked up the car. Then I asked a friend who knows more about cars than me and he looked at it for five minutes and said the oil stain is probably just from a loose drain plug from my last oil change. He tightened it a little bit and guess what, no more stains for three days now. I couldn't believe that garage was ready to charge me thousands for completely unnecessary work. So now I'm scared to take my car anywhere because I don't know who to trust. A coworker told me to just click here and check out some options because apparently there are services that list reliable mechanics with real customer reviews, but I still wanted to ask actual people here first. How do you guys find a mechanic you can trust in Dubai? Do you just stick with the dealership even though they're expensive? Or is there a way to tell if a smaller garage is honest before they try to sell you a bunch of stuff you don't need? I really don't want to go through this again and I'm hoping some of you have advice on how to avoid getting scammed. Thanks so much for any help.