Adventures With Walker's New Emissions Testing Program

Earlier this week, I wrote about the problems that are already occurring with Scott Walker's new vehicle emissions testing system. Walker decided to put the foxes in charge of the hen house by having auto repair garages do the testing. Since the change happened only a few weeks ago, there are already problems, from an inordinate amount of cars failing to pass the test to the very same garages doing the tests trying to overcharge customers by upselling them repairs they don't need.

The state and the new company that Walker contracted to do the testing, Systech, pushed the change as making it even faster and more convenient. They need to be brought up on charges of false advertising.

What I did not mention in the previous posts was that one of our vehicles was due to be tested so that we could get the tags renewed. And this set off quite an adventure.

Under the old system, we would drive to the nearest testing station, which was about three or four miles away. Sometimes we'd have to wait up to 30 minutes, but often it was only 5 or 10 minutes. The car would be tested and we'd be on our way.

Under the new system, we first had to look up the new testing places. There were four places listed in our area. We knew of all of the places, but were only familiar with two of them. One was the dealership where we bought our cars and the other was a local garage where my dad had his oil changed a few times and did some work on one of our cars once. The other two was another dealership and a garage that we knew already knew had a bad reputation.

My wife, who would be taking the vehicle in for testing, wanted to go to the garage we were familiar with, Cleveland Auto Repair. We both thought that the dealer would try to upsell her services that she didn't need or want.

It turned out to be what we thought a good idea since my dad had to take his van in for an oil change and to have a 'check engine' light checked out. We could each take care of our business with one stop. Or so we thought.

My dad made an appointment for Friday morning, and my wife met him there so he could leave his car for them to work on.

By mid afternoon, the van wasn't ready yet, so my wife went back to the shop just to get our car tested. When she arrived, they told her that their machine was broken so they couldn't do any testing. They told her to come back the next day. This raised a red flag for me. Just how does one break a machine that doesn't have any stress put on it in just two weeks?

By the end of the day, my dad's van still wasn't ready and he had no word from the garage on its status. When we drove to the garage, there was a mechanic there working on his personal collector's car, but he couldn't give us any information on the van. Both my father and my wife remarked on how it didn't look like they had even moved the van all day.

Saturday morning, my wife picked up my father and they went back to the garage. His van still wasn't done. They said that they couldn't figure out the cause of a problem that didn't even exist with the van. When my dad confronted them, they copped an attitude and was very rude to my father. Needless to say he chose to take his van and go elsewhere. The odd thing is, even though they said that they had worked for hours on my dad's van, they had never even moved the seat. We know this because my dad keeps the seat far up and the mechanics were too tall to even get in the car much less drive it without moving the seat.

At the same time, they told my wife that the emissions testing device was still broken.

She then went to the dealership and got the car tested (it passed) but that took her an hour. And, as we had suspected they would, they tried to upsell her some services that she didn't ask about and didn't need.

So all told, it took my wife two days and two different places just to get a test done. And this doesn't include the aggravation from all the unnecessary chasing and hassle dealing with rude people and people trying to push unwanted and unneeded services. Not exactly what I would call convenient, much less quicker.  It's definitely a matter of Walker and company trying to blow smoke up our tailpipes.

That said, it's probably just as good that the garage didn't have their machine working (if indeed it truly wasn't), considering the crap they tried to pull on my dad.

After all this, I decided that I wanted to file a complaint about this. The one thing I noted immediately is that the website for the program, which is supposed to be a state program, actually belongs to the Systech. As you imagine, it has their logo and a whole page dedicated to self-promotion. That makes me wonder, are we, the taxpayers, paying the company to advertise themselves on our dime?

It would fit in with the theme of Corporate Fitzwalkerstan. As does the typical routine of Republicans "fixing" what ain't broke, thereby breaking it but good.

UPDATE: I found that the garage had a Facebook page, so I left my complaint there.  There response was less than professional, to say the least:

Walker's Emissions Stunt Leaves People Exhausted

In yet another moronic move by Scott Walker and his Republican legislative henchman, they have thrown drivers and taxpayers to the wolves.

Instead of having a company whose sole job is to test vehicles for emissions standards, Walker, in his infinite lack of wisdom moved that responsibility to car repair shops, who would stand to rake in a lot of money when cars "don't pass" the test.

Walker's official stance is that it would save taxpayers a whopping $600,000, which translates to a whole dime for each of us!

But as a cogent person might have deduced, it's really not a good idea.

First of all, Walker's administration knew six months ahead of the initiation of the change, that it would cost 62 jobs.

Then there is a problem with the math. Under the old system, each car tested cost $4.95. Under the new system, the price per car dropped to $2 per car. We also know that in 2010, 626,099 vehicles were tested. Given those stats, the state should have saved $1,846,726.55.

So where did the extra $1.2 million go to? Apparently it went to pay the administrative cost for the new agency, SysTech International LLC, which is located in Utah.

If one figures in that the 62 people are collecting unemployment compensation, and in the deplorable job market situation in Fitzwalkerstan, they probably will be for a long time, that $600K will be eaten up in about 40 weeks.

So, so far, we have very little, if anything in savings, 62 people laid off and millions of Wisconsin dollars going to Utah. Brilliant, right?

But as I always advise the gentle reader, with all things Walker, there is more. There is always more.

Now, the repair garage owners are loving this new system. They say that it's bringing in new customers and hey, if the car fails the test, that's even more money for them.

But the fox would also love being put in charge of guarding the chicken coop.

Just two weeks into the new system, we are seeing problems with the system. The first red flag comes from a sudden increase in the number of cars that just happen not to pass:

Just two weeks into the shift of Wisconsin emissions testing to 198 repair shops and dealerships, the number of failing vehicles is already higher than normal.

For the past two years, an average of 6% to 7% of vehicles failed their tests at the nine centralized stations in southeastern Wisconsin, according to state data. But the average fail rate has increased to 9% since the test sites shifted to private businesses on July 2, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of the 18,600 tests conducted through July 18.

Eight of the new testing locations had a fail rate of 20% or more.

As one could have expected, Walker's administration's attitude to this apparent skulduggery is "Nothing to see here, folks. Carry on."

And as many people could testify, a lot of places, even when you go in for something simple like an oil change, like to try to upsell the customer into buying a service or part that they don't really need.

And yup, we're seeing that with Walker's system too:

Marianne Meunier said her 2007 Chevy Malibu had never failed a vehicle emissions test, so when a mechanic on Milwaukee's north side told her this month that the car had failed and would need $2,500 worth of repairs to pass an inspection, she was distraught.

"I haven't had a problem with my car," she said. "I didn't have the money to fix it. My husband is really sick. So we have to watch how much we spend."

Meunier, 82, was skeptical but planned to take out a loan to pay for the repairs, which consisted of a broken sensor, a fuel pump part and a broken circuit board.

Her son, Terry Meunier, persuaded her to take her car to an auto-parts store instead, where a worker hooked it up to a meter that confirmed she needed the new sensor and fuel pump unit, but no circuit board. Based on that, a mechanic at another site gave her a new estimate of $417.

"That's for a tuneup, replacing the NOx sensor and replacing the sending unit in the fuel pump in the gas tank," Terry Meunier said. "When I found out they were trying to rip my mother off for $2,500 for work she didn't even need . . . Governor Walker shouldn't have done what he did. I didn't have a problem going to those emission test places. Now I have to go to these garages and deal with these crooks."

The report goes on to say that five of the 198 new facilities already have an "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau.

Well, doesn't that just raise your confidence level?

In sum, we have yet another one of Walker's "money-saving" schemes that actually saves next to nothing under the best of conditions, costs the state another 62 jobs and causes car owners to have to track down where to go and worry about getting ripped off.

Yep. Just another day in Corporate Fitzwalkerstan.