At one time Earl's Saw Shop was the premier small-engine repair shop in Boulder. John and his other repair staff were excellent, and so was the service. The only knock on them was the long turnaround times, especially during busy times of the year. I used them repeatedly for various chainsaw and small engine tune-ups and repairs, and for saw blade sharpening. They were great. Not anymore.
The problem now at Earl's is the owner, a disagreeable lady who has no sense of public relations whatsoever and who runs her business (apparently inherited from Earl) with an iron fist, intimidating her staff and creating a sense of fear and a CYA mentality that trickles down to everyone, including customers.
My problem with Earl's started when my large leaf vacuum suddenly stopped running. Picture a huge cube that tows on a trailer behind a lawn tractor: it has an engine, a huge hose that vacuums up leaves, and a mulching grinder. When it works, it rocks. I tried my own repairs -- successively replacing the battery, spark plug, fuel filter, and finally the entire carburetor, but it simply wouldn't start for anything.
Stumped, I rented a trailer, loaded it up, and through much effort I won't detail (who closes at 2:00 on a Saturday?) dropped it off Earl's. I was told that it would be a few _weeks_ before they could even look at it.
A few weeks passed, and I hadn't heard anything from them, so I followed up with a call. Oh yeah, we'll have a look at that this week, the guy on the phone said. A week later they notified me that the vacuum was done. I rented a trailer again and went over to Earl's to pick up the repaired vacuum. The ticket reported that the air filter was dirty and it had "bad gas". That was a head-scratcher, given all my troubleshooting. Vexed that it took four weeks for that conclusion, I paid the exorbitant $130 (!) repair charge, loaded the unit onto the rented trailer with the assistance of the guy behind the counter, and off I went.
A few days later, when found time to use the newly repaired unit, it wouldn't start -- the exact problem I took it in for originally! I couldn't make it in over the weekend, so on Monday, I called Earl's back to report the vacuum not running, and was told to bring it in again. Thinking the problem must be minor, I loaded up right away, dropped it off, and the entire week went by without any word on what the problem was. Finally, on Friday, after hearing nothing all week, I called in to see what was taking so long, and was told I could pick it up right away, but that there would be another $65 charge.
I disputed this, of course, because the original repair wasn't successful. After getting nowhere with the guy who answered the phone, he referred me to the owner. Immediately, she was argumentative. "Ticket says this was repaired", she insisted over and over. Well, obviously not, and after a minute or so of back and forth, she absolutely refused to do anything further over the phone, saying I needed to come down in person. She said that they always take photos of their repairs before and and after, and I could come see them.
I get there, and of course there are no photos. Our argument continued, during which the guy who had helped me load it up originally made the utterly false claim that he'd offered to start up the unit for me at that time but that I'd refused (huh? absolutely nothing of the sort happened).
The mechanic was summoned from the back, and said that the problem was that there was water in the gas. Whaaat? Well, if that was the case, then it was their own water in the gas, because I hadn't added or removed anything from the tank since the original repair. Maybe it got rained on, he suggested, forgetting that there hadn't been rain for weeks. (Besides, don't gas caps seal?) At this point, the owner flat-out called me "a liar", manufacturing out of thin air some kind of story that I'd used the vacuum all weekend, that it had "broken" again and that I was trying to get away with a free repair. (The monster piles of unvacuumed leaves on my property would beg to differ with that.)
After a half hour of rancorous argumentation between me, the owner, and three or so others there, we agreed never to do business with each other again, and "out of charity" she dismissed the second repair charge.
I verified that the vacuum would start -- indeed it did (finally, yay!) -- pulled around to load up and leave, and out of nowhere, a guy from the shop comes to help me load it. He whispers to me that "if it were him, he'd never come back here -- see how she is?". Then, in a gem of an aha! moment, he reveals that the problem with the engine not starting was that there is a interconnect switch on the casing of the vacuum unit that wasn't making contact, and that was cutting off the spark to the engine. (Who knew?) All he'd had to do is shift the case a little to the side, and voila! That was the problem all along!
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