TL;DR - After a few questionable interactions, no longer recommend this once trusted service station.
And the search for an honest mechanic in the DMV continues...sigh
For the past couple of years, I've been highly recommending Backlick Road Service Station to everyone and anyone who's asked me to for a referral for a good repair shop. I first started patronizing this place because they have the cheapest gas prices in the Annandale/Springfield area; partly that's because they only accept cash for gas sales.
But in mid-2017, I started taking my car there and was generally happy with the work and the costs. Bill Kim's family has owned this place since the 70's and has established a loyal clientele, which used to include me. Up until recently, i found the mechanics here to be honest and transparent about any work that needed to be done.
I'm not sure what changed, but the last two times I've brought in my car, it seemed like I was shelling out $300-$500 each visit. Now my car is over 10 years old, so I understand that things go wrong but it seemed like the intervals between major repair work had gone from every 9-12 months, to every 3-4 months. But I trusted these guys, so I continued to recommend them.
But this all changed two months ago, when I referred a female relative to this shop for a routine oil change. She dropped the car off on a Monday morning, and as part of their standard oil change service, Bill's guys will do a "once over" while the car is up on the lift to do a preventive check. Upon this preventive check, they called my relative to say that as soon as the oil change was complete, the check engine light came on and there was (and to quote) "barely any power" coming from the car and it was almost not able to be driven from the garage to the parking lot (about 10 feet). After plugging in their OBD2 scanner, they stated the codes revealed some problems with the "emissions system".
Hmmm...this seemed incredibly dubious, since two of my other relatives had been in this same car (older model Nissan with about 120K miles) the weekend prior and driven to North Carolina and back with absolutely no issues. She asked that no work or other diagnostics be performed on the vehicle until she was able to speak to them in person.
Since she works in DC and the garage closes at 7pm, she wasn't able to swing by before they closed. Because I was the one who referred her and felt somewhat responsible for this situation, I offered to drive to the lot with her 7:30pm to check the car out and see if it really was experiencing the catastrophic issues the mechanic claimed. So surprise surprise, when we inserted the spare key and voila, the car started RIGHT UP WITH NO problems. We even drove it a few feet and still no problems.
So the more likely scenario here is that after the oil change was complete, the mechanics didn't reset the check engine light (which had come as notification it was time for an oil change), and wanted to use this as an excuse to charge for some unnecessary work. The next day, she and I both took time out of our work day to pay for the oil change and ask them about the mysterious check engine light.
When they tried to give us the runaround about how the check engine light came on "right away" after the oil change and the sudden reduction of power, she immediately countered with how she had come the night before and was able to start the car up, let it idle for about 5 minutes, and driven it around the parking lot with no issues. They had no response for that, except to say, "well, the check engine light is on, and we still recommend a diagnostic".
Disgusted, she just wanted to pay the $40 for the oil change and leave. But the final insult was that in order to reset the check engine light, she would have to pay ANOTHER $40, since she was going against the advice of the mechanics. They mentioned something about liability and responsibility to the consumer and blah blah blah. It was all just B.S. at this point. She paid the $80 and left.
The whole time, Mr. Kim was sitting stone faced in front of his computer and didn't say one word to us, but let his assistant, Robbie bear the brunt of our frustration over this situation.
As an epilogue to this tale, she had to take her car for inspection last week, which this year included emissions testing and what was the result? Why, her car passed...OF COURSE - which I always suspected it would.
As the old Ronald Reagan quote so aptly recommends, "Trust, but verify". So if people want to continue to patronize the Backlick Road Service station, and they tell you work needs to be done which seems out of the norm or inordinately high. Tell them, you want a second opinion. It's your right as a consumer. read more
