The unfortunate thing about oil changes is unless you're DIYing them or have a reliable mechanic overqualified for oil changing, every one is a risky diceroll of some oil changing lackey putting their ham fists on your vehicle and wrecking something.
From cross-threaded drain plugs to unnecessary access holes cut in aero panels out of laziness, there's enough examples out there to be concerned.
Very true. I don't know why more cars don't have top-side oil filters, because it would make DIY oil changes so much easier.
Even when I lived in an apartment with no garage, I could easily change the oil in my car (mk4 VW Jetta TDI) out in the parking lot. I use an oil extractor to suck it out the dipstick hole, and since the filter is front and centre, I don't need to get under the car at all. In fact, I've never removed the oilpan drain plug.
I've never had an issue taking the car to a place like valvoline where oil changes are their bread and butter. I've only heard of that sort of stuff happening at dealerships where they might have highschoolers working above their heads in the maintenance department.
The first and only time I used such a place, the Jiffy Lube in Pacifica off Skyline, the smell of burning oil graced my driving experience for the better part of a week afterwards.
You see, I had brought quality Mobil 1 full synthetic oil in quart bottles, which the career oil changers didn't seem to understand how to pour without spilling everywhere. Pro-tip: the offset spout is supposed to be at the top, not the bottom orientation.
Oil changes are inherently a probable interaction with either children or clowns. And I'm saying this as someone who did oil changes as a summer job, back before I had a driver's license. The things I've seen... I pity the fool who relies on random third parties for maintenance. EVs are a potentially huge improvement in this department.
To be honest, you showed up with some weird bottle the people working there probably have never used and you got the expected results. You do something like that with anything and it would probably result in the same sort of situation. I've never had an issue. I know how to change my own oil and still pay people to do it. Not worth my time when its so cheap to have someone else do it in 15 minutes while I sit there looking at emails. I can get any expert or schmuck or handy relative to work on my car for a range of competitive prices. Legally I have to pay tesla $22,500 to replace a battery. Not much of an improvement for the consumer.
There's nothing weird about a 1-quart bottle of Mobil 1, it's the same basic form factor retail oil quarts have been sold in since they stopped being steel cans, i.e. before most Jiffy Lube employees were born.
The problem isn't the bottle, the problem is a combination of carelessness and incompetence. Which is what you're going to get with a high probability at these low-level positions, good luck with that.
Even without oil changes. Modern cars are amazingly reliable. I believe you could drive most of them to 50k km or even more without doing anything, but filling gas and washer fluid. Wouldn't do them much good in long term, but it is possible.
I know a guy that went 40,000 mi never changing the oil on a brand new Mazda 3. Eventually the engine started to fail. Amazingly Mazda replaced the engine for him, but cancelled his warranty after that.
He sold Mazda's for a living and literally had no idea the oil needed to be changed....
