I had such high hopes for this shop. Their ratings and reviews are great, and the owner, Rod, talks…read moreup his skills a great deal.
I took in a 2003 Subaru Baja for him to look at. He put it on the lift and looked at it for a while, hit on it with his hammer a bunch, and told me that he'd have no problem getting everything back in working order. He was very over the top with telling me that he fixes way worse than this all the time, and how he's one of the only people that even does work like this, and how he's 71 years old and has been doing this for most of his life, and showing me a few other projects he had going around the shop that were way worse than mine, and "hell, look at this one over here, this guy is paying me 15 grand to replace the whole bottom of his car", and how he was surprised to see a Baja in this good of condition, because most of them are so rotted out that they aren't worth fixing, but not this one. He was positive he could fix this one.
The quote he gave me was $3,000, which was just within my budget for this part of getting the car fixed back up. I told him I wanted to get it checked out mechanically and get some things on that end sorted but I'd drop it off to him in a week or two. Taking Rod at his word and a handshake, I dumped a bunch of parts, labor, and money into the car to get it a bit more road worthy.
True to my word, I dropped the car off to his shop on my way out of town a couple weeks ago. I knew it'd take him a while to get to it, as he told me "he's so good at what he does, and he's one of the only ones around that does it that he's super busy and he'll get to it when he gets to it." I knew this going in and told him I didn't have a problem with the wait, as long as the work was completed as agreed.
Well, Rod called me yesterday. He said "man, I don't know what I was looking at when I gave you this quote, but I missed a bunch of stuff, and I don't want to fix it". I asked what that meant, and if he could ballpark a price that would make him want to fix it. "Man, you could give me $7k and I still wouldn't want to fix it. It needs a lot of work." Yes, Rod, it does need a lot of work. We looked at it together. We talked about it at length. We knew it needed a lot of work. You quoted me 3k for that work. This is a car, not something like a house where once you start opening walls you can find more stuff. The whole bottom of the car is exposed. You can see everything that would need to be fixed. You went around the whole bottom of the car with a hammer and said "yep, this bit right here is the only part that needs fixing, I'll fix it right because that's the only way I do things".
THEN, BARELY AN HOUR LATER, Rod has the nerve to call me back and tell me I need to come get my car ASAP because it's taking up too much space! Rod, buddy, pal, when I dropped my car off to you, you said you'd get to it when you got to it, and it could take weeks. Now that YOU have changed your mind about the promise you made, you need ME to drop everything and come get the car immediately? I did go pick it up the next day (today) just to wash my hands of this place.
So, thanks to taking Rod at his word, I'm now out around $4,500 of other work I put into this car that he now claims to not want to, or not be able to fix. $4,500 is a lot of money to just lose because you trusted someone who swore up and down that they were the right man for the job. Maybe think twice or even a third time before trusting Rod to do what he says he'll do.
