Well, I am certainly shocked by the other reviews for this business, given the experience I just had there yesterday. In fact, the glowing reviews on Yelp is part of what made me take my car there in the first place. The other reason was that I found a coupon in a flyer for a standard transmission service for "starting at $59.99". (of course I know there will always be exceptions that drive up the starting price, but wait until you hear how much.....) The day before I went in, my check engine light came on, so I had them look at that (it was the O2 sensor - nothing that they work on) and then set up the appointment for transmission service.
I was even more sure he was an honest guy when he told me that with the older cars (mine is a 2000 Toyota Corolla) that it's sometimes better to just do the basic service instead of a full flush of the system (more expensive) since that can sometimes cause other problems. So I was completely disarmed and assuming he was going to do the right thing when I took my car in for the service two days later.
They get it up on the rack, Tim writes up my order and hands me the paperwork to fill out and sign charging $159.99 for the basic service. I was shocked. I handed him my coupon for the $59.99 (thinking this is a HUGE difference - weird) and he looks at it somewhat uncomfortably, mumbles something about "specialty fluids" and then quickly says "how about I knock off 20 dollars, 20 dollars? okay." then quickly changes the price on the invoice to $139.99.
I was so stunned and unprepared for that event that I very regrettably said nothing. Of course, I wish that I had. I sat there waiting for my car trying to figure out what would justify this and couldn't come up with anything that made sense. After a service that took all of 15-20 minutes I was driving down the road seriously ticked off. What kind of bait and switch is this?? First of all my car is a 2000 Corolla - exactly what kind of "specialty fluids" (differing from the regular fluids that are included in the service) would cost an extra EIGHTY dollars? Second, you shouldn't be "knocking a few dollars off" of your inflated price, you should be starting at the advertised $59.99 and then justifying any add-ons if there are any.
By the way, other garages have quoted me around $100 to do the FULL flush of the system, so why Tim sees fit to charge anyone $159.99 for just the BASIC service is beyond me. Especially when the work takes 20 minutes. Not accounting for those magical specialty fluids, that comes to about $500 an hour for labor???
Needless to say, I will never ever take my car there again, nor will I recommend this place to anyone. If you choose to go, beware, and talk about the pricing up front - then compare it to other places to be sure he's giving you a fair price. And you can forget about him honoring his coupons, he certainly didn't honor mine.
VERY disappointing. Just another mechanic ripping someone off, in my opinion. Sorry to say. read more
