PSA: A customer's 'recent' brake job in Tempe was actually done with parts from 2018
Last week, a car came in for a shake at highway speed, and after pulling the wheels, I found the box for the new-looking rotors in the trunk, dated from three years ago, which the owner swore were installed just last month by another shop.
Julia_hayes has a point about bulk buying, but a three year old box is a red flag. New rotors should have a recent manufacture date, not old stock. The shake at highway speed points to a bad install or warped parts, not just old boxes. So was the shop cutting corners or did the owner get the timeline wrong?
Honestly, that box date doesn't prove anything. Tbh shops buy parts in bulk all the time and just grab from the shelf, so a 2018 date on the box is normal. The rotors looked new, right? The shop probably just had old stock sitting around. It's not like parts go bad sitting in a box. Maybe the owner is misremembering when the work was actually done.