They'll destroy your engine twice!! I'd gone to Advance Auto for a few years for standard services…read moreon both mine, and my wife's car. Nothing major, just regular oil changes and standard services. I had no problems overall, outside of the regular push for unnecessary add-ons, but what shop doesn't do that.
I had a service done on my wife's car that included new spark plugs, and had no problems for several months. Then, all of a sudden, the engine shook furiously, making terrible noises, and the dashboard lit up. We had since moved over 30 minutes away, so we had the car towed to a near by mechanic, suspecting no foul play, and simply some terrible luck.
We dropped the car off and got a call the next after they had examined it. The first thing they asked was: "did you have a friend or Facebook mechanic work on your car?". Obviously, that was not that case, we had paid $200 an hour for work done at Advanced Auto. Turns out, when they replaced the spark plugs, they were never torqued, and had been moving around until the tip of one broke off, went into the combustion chamber, and destroyed the engine!
I called Advanced and had the car towed over, thankfully the shop I had gone to fully documented everything they did with videos and had a statement from the mechanic, so there was no denying what Advanced had done. With all the facts on the table, after a couple of days, Advanced admitted fault and said they would replace the engine. Advanced refused to cover the money I had spent at the other shop to have the car examined, saying they could have done the work at their shop, and already being burnt out on this process, I ate the cost, and decided to be happy with the engine replacement.
Over two weeks later we got the car back, not joyous by any means, but glad this was over. We picked it up at the end of the business day, parked it in our garage, and went inside. The next morning my wife left early, and when I went to the garage to leave for work, there was a huge puddle of oil on the floor where she was parked! Advanced at first claimed it was just a bad seal, then switched stories saying the replacement engine was damaged in transit. Keep in mind, the car was pouring out oil and the dash light for low oil lit up on our way back to Advanced, but they claimed they had tested the car for two days and driven it 50 miles, but they never caught that???
Another two weeks later, we finally got the car back after they fixed the issues causing the massive oil leak. I was so exhausted that I didn't even notice it, but the next morning my wife told me the check engine light was on. And when calling Advanced, they told me only the mechanic who ruined the engine in the first place could work on it, and he was on vacation for the next 10 days, so we'd have to live with it until then! Just pathetic customer service, we'd wasted 20+ hours driving back and forth from West Sac, had our car gone for nearly a month, and we'd just have to wait after it still wasn't fixed?? We had no more energy for this, and as we had been saving to get a new car for my wife next year, we traded it in early to end the nightmare. The trade in was valued $3k lower due to the engine replacement being on record, so we've been exploring legal options for reimbursement of all our losses throughout this fiasco. Stay away from Advanced Auto and save yourself incalculable stress.
