Went there for brakes for my friends car. She lives paycheck to paycheck and was looking for somewhere cheap. The repair ended up being over $800, way over their estimate. Instead they said she could trade it in as is on a car in their lot they were trying to sell. After the trade in, the "new" one was $3,000. I helped her buy it because it looked good and seemed to run well for an older car. A couple of days later she noticed a strange noise and wobble in the car whenever she used the brakes. We took it back for them to look at and it turned out that one of their techs didn't replace the control arms as they had thought. They started working on it and it reminded me of me trying to fix a car after watching a youtube video. I've never seen such craziness.
After waiting almost two hours they told us they needed to keep it overnight. Once she got it back it seemed better, but then the head gasket blew a couple weeks later. At first they said we bought the car as-is from a private party because they aren't a car dealer and that it wasn't their responsibility. My friend told them that wasn't acceptable and that they sold her a lemon and that they must've known about the condition of the engine. They grudgingly agreed to flush it and try a quick fix. Somehow in the process of them trying the quick fix, the engine block ended up cracking and the engine was ruined. After some arguing, they agreed to swap the engine with a used one in good shape from a totaled car.
They took it and kept it for over a month trying to replace the engine. In the meantime they gave my friend a series of loaners each with their own problems sometimes breaking down on her. Stressful doesn't even begin to explain..... She eventually got her car back but the air conditioning doesn't work since the engine swap and just yesterday one of the front tires blew out.
We took a closer look at the tires, and the front two were completely bald and the rear tires had almost no tread left. These were not the tires on the car when we bought it. One of the selling points was that they said they had just put new tires on it. We can't prove anything but the only possibility I can think of is that someone at the shop swapped the new tires it had when we bought it from them with the oldest most dangerous tires I've seen while it was there getting the engine replaced. Maybe they were mad about the engine they had to swap so they took the tires in exchange. Who knows. She's only had the car 4 months and it literally had new tires when we bought it. Now the front two have the metal mesh starting to come out on the edges where the tread was.
Throughout this process my friend found out that they have a side business buying junk cars at auction and fixing them with used parts from junkyards, then they sell them from their lot. They do the least possible to clean them up so they seem in good shape. I assume they just clear the service engine codes too, because the service engine light came on less than a week after it came back from them both times. I feel like we got scammed and are left with a piece of junk but there really don't seem to be many options besides trying to take them to court and who can afford that? Stay far far away!
They might seem nice and cheap and I think they do actually try to do their best, but they just aren't that good. I feel like they get themselves into trouble because they just aren't experienced enough to do major repairs and they have too much drama going on behind the scenes. read more
