My partner went to Mavis today for an inspection, despite my fears that they'd try to milk her for a job. Sure enough, they came up with a whole list of things the car needed and vague reasons why the inspection failed. They said vaguely the brakes failed the inspection - they drove the car and the brakes vibrated and "felt horrible" (in fact, they stop the car perfectly well and have great bite), kept going on and on trying to sell a brake job.
Only when she pressed for a code or a specific regulation or test failure or reason they failed the car, did she start to get taken seriously. They failed it because their "visual inspection" observed a seized brake caliper (which they originally said was just sticking). My question is: is this a legitimate/legal reason to fail a car inspection in NY? What I've found online tells me that they are supposed to only fail based on a caliper if the caliper is leaking, which they never said it was.
As an aside, included in the list of work they wanted to do: flush dirty power steering and brake fluids, replace battery (they claimed it was leaking and the mechanic showed what he claimed to be battery acid on his finger), brakes and rotors all around.
UPDATE - I added this to comments as well since I'm not sure which is the best place to put this...
When pressed, they finally cited section 79.21 (a).14:
- Visually inspect components of the braking system. Reject if: there is any disconnected, improperly installed, broken, frozen, seized, bypassed, or missing component of the braking system (they highlighted the words "visually inspect" and "seized"). Is it theoretically possible that the caliper is seized in such a way that they could see it isn't resetting to neutral properly from underneath?