It's sad, but Southern Oregon is a very bad place to be if you're in need of a good, trustworthy auto mechanic. Speaking as someone who has lived in the area off and on for several decades now, the options have always been few and far between and generally quite unsatisfactory with regard to the follow-through. Repair jobs always seem to take twice as long here and invariably end up costing twice as much as well. This seems to especially be the case in the Illinois Valley. A year or so ago though, I was (temporarily) joyous to find a couple of seemingly nice older guys here at Redwood Automotive whom I HOPED would also be as efficient and fair as they were friendly (the owner plays the role of your bestest buddy, all the way up to the hand over of money). As with a lot of auto shoppes, these guys charge almost entirely on the hours expended as opposed to a more fixed price applied to the job itself. [Translate this practice over to any other service sector profession, whether its fixing radios, installing windows or making cappuccinos, and the concept becomes ludicrous. 'You want a large pizza with all the trimmings ? Well, I don't know, we're kinda backed up right now, and it's going to take me awhile to cut up all those olives and onions; and now it looks like the cook will have to make the dough itself from scratch since we're out of pies. We might have this ready by tomorrow though. But with the extra labor involved, that'll come to $75, give or take.'] Yet, even still, it is harder than heck, if not impossible, to get a sincere estimate out of the guys at Redwood Automotive, and the 'ballpark figure' that is eventually extracted invariably winds up becoming at least doubled in the end. Although my first experience with them was lukewarm at best in terms of follow-thru, I decided to give them a couple more chances to prove themselves, if only because they were nice, AND most of all, LOCAL. However, after four or five interactions now with these guys, I definitely will not be back. A few weeks ago I went in for a radiator hose replacement and also an oil change (an advertised special on the latter, otherwise I would have done it myself). Initially they tried to tell me I would need a new radiator too, even though the one I had was only a few months old. When I pointed out that the radiator itself was virtually brand new and threatened to take the job elsewhere, they quickly backed off and said 'oh yeah it's fine, sometimes its just easier to install a whole new system'. An entire week later they finally had the car ready (I had no other vehicle by the way, and lived 20 miles from the shoppe). Worse still, the bill came to almost $500, high stakes for someone as poor as myself. And yes, it was just for the hose, a couple head covers, oil, oil filter and ... LABOR. But hold on, we're not through with the story yet. It seems they may have screwed something up with the cooling/heating system when they replaced the hose. I already knew they'd emptied out the air conditioning system to make it easier on themselves to do the job (they removed all the freon, without replacing it). And though I knew I couldn't turn on the air conditioning system anymore because of that, even through several weeks of hot weather, I didn't figure there would be a problem when I needed to turn on either the heater or the defrost the first cool morning that came along. Uh-huh. Turns out, the very first time I turned on the heater, I hear this weird 'thin' sound emanating from where it resides and suddenly the cab started filling with noxious-smelling radiator coolant (literally leaking all over) and the windows fogging up. Yup, the heater core got blown. The only reason I went back to them at this point was because I'd HOPED they would do the right thing and figure out what they may have done wrong, or at least provide a discount when replacing the heater core. Wishful thinking; and no such luck. Once again it took them nearly a week to fix and once again the ticket was nearly $500 (the heater core separately only costs about $40). Except in rare situations (and when the parts are only a couple bucks), a good rule of thumb is that the labor cost should never be more than twice what the parts are. When the labor ticket winds up being over ten times the price of the parts, well, you KNOW you're getting screwed. Let's see, they also managed to bash in my brand new side mirror (so that it doesn't function right anymore), and as I drove off I started hearing a strange 'clunking' sound in the heater core area where they had been working. Other caveats to be aware of: they are not 'set up' to take credit or debit cards. It's cash or check only. This is not a temporary situation either, it's apparently a conscious business decision. And if writing a check, you have to make it out to the personal name of the proprietor rather than the name of the business. Solicitation of this place should perhaps be considered only as a last resort. read more