Changing oil in your car is one of the maintenance items that still needs to be done -- occasionally. The question is just how often occasionally is. The manufacturer says one thing and JiffyLube says something else. Who do you believe? I'm here to say, well... it depends. It depends basically on how long you intend to keep your car.
It is important to change brake fluid and coolant too. Have you changed those in your car? Most people haven't unless the dealer included it in the "major service" that was done last time. But for the same reason that you change your oil, brake fluid and coolant should be changed regularly -- about every two years. The reason is that coolant wears out. That may seem odd because it doesn't exactly do anything other than heat up in the engine and cool off in the radiator, but those thermal cycles and age in general wears out the chemicals. Actually it isn't the coolant itself that wears out so much, it is the other additives in there that keep it working well, like corrosion inhibitors.
What about brake fluid? Actually, it doesn't really wear out, instead it gets water in it. I remember on Chrysler dealer service guy told me that brake fluid never needed changing because the system is sealed. No... the system is not sealed. Look carefully at the cap on the fluid reservoir and you will find a hole to let air in and out to compensate for thermal expansion of the fluid. Now if there is air in there, there also is moisture, and that moisture gets into the fluid eventually. Water in the brake fluid is bad for two reasons: First is that it doesn't perform well at high temperatures. Your brakes get very hot when you use them a lot (coming down a mountain grade, for example). The fluid is designed to behave under those conditions, water is not. It boils. That means that you now have gaseous water (steam) instead of fluid and that compresses when you press on the pedal. It is very possible that the steam will compress enough that the pedal will go to the floor and no brake application will be made. Obviously this is a very dangerous situation. The other problem is that the water in the system can cause various iron brake parts to rust. The problem here is that the system works using little pistons in cylinders to move and actuate the brakes. If there is rust in the small clearance areas, the pistons can stick in place and the brakes not work. This is another dangerous situation. This does take time to happen and likely won't show up until the car gets pretty old.
Getting back to changing your oil, the questions are how often it should be done and who should do it. And the answer to both is: it depends.
There are two opposing corporate entities recommending oil changing cycles. The car manufacturers recommend doing it as rarely as possible because they think owners don't want to pay for maintenance on their cars and the inconvenience of doing it. On the other side are the professional oil changing organizations, like JiffyLube, who recommend doing it more often. Which is right? If you are leasing your car, or planning on selling it after a few years and less than 50,000 miles or so, then use the manufacturer's recommendation. You don't care if the car lasts 100,000 miles or 200,000 miles. If you are going to keep the car until it drops dead, then by all means change the oil more often -- because it does make the engine last longer.
Where should you have your oil changed? It's easy if you own a BMW. Their maintenance is free, so have the dealer do it. If you are on your own and the car is under warranty, then it likely is better to have the dealer do it because it is easily traceable in the event of needed warranty work.
When the car is out of warranty, do it yourself! It's pretty easy and not very time consuming. That works if you don't mind lying on the ground and reaching under the car to put the pan to catch the oil there and undo the oil drain plug -- and deal with recycling the old dirty oil. If you don't want to do that, then you need to find someone else to do it.
I do not recommend JiffyLube in particular. The reason is that they never make mistakes. That's good you say? I say it isn't. The problem is that all people do make mistakes sometime, but those at JiffyLube never admit to it. I can document three cases at different stores where that happened and I will detail two of them here:
I routinely had my BMW's oil changed at my local JiffyLube until the time when they overfilled the system. That is just as bad if not worse than running with too little oil. When I got home, I noticed that the engine was making very funny noises and wondered why. I checked the oil dipstick and found too much oil, so I drained some out and fortunately the threatening noises went away. I returned to JiffyLube to complain and was told that it was impossible for that to happen because they always check the dipstick before the car is returned to the owner. In this case that apparently didn't happen because the staff was distracted. That was because they didn't have the right oil filter, discovered after trying two that were "supposed" to fit. So they put the old one back in the car (filled with old oil) and forgot that they also put enough new oil into the car to compensate for an empty filter. That reasoning didn't work with the management -- because they always check the dipstick...
The other case I will report is reported by a close friend who used to take his classic Alfa Romeo to JiffyLube for routine oil changes. The last time he did that, they reported that the oil drain plug had been cross-threaded. This means that whoever changed the oil previously wasn't careful when replacing the drain plug after the oil was drained. It was forced back in (which isn't that difficult to do when using pneumatic tools), cutting new threads in the oil pan with the drain plug. Of course the new threads aren't good because they exist along with the old ones and can easily cause leaks and difficulty putting the plug in. They informed him that they couldn't possibly have done that because they always are careful. He produced evidence from the glove box that nobody else had changed the oil, but that wasn't enough to convince the manager. Note also that he was forced to pay for the repair to the oil pan because he couldn't take it elsewhere because the drain plug now wouldn't fit properly.
So the message is to routinely change oil, coolant, and brake fluid in your car. Doing that really does make the car last longer. I will leave you with a story told me a few years ago by a parts manager at a local Mercedes dealer:
The staff at this dealer always got the first opportunity to buy a trade-in. A very nice lady brought her four-year-old Mercedes E-class in to trade it in for a new one. The car was beautiful! All of them in the service area gathered around it thinking that it would be really nice in their own garage. As she exited the car, she said "This car was really great, and so reliable, that I never had to bring it in for any service at all!" They all walked away immediately.
