If I could give 0 stars I would. This is long because it was a horrible encounter with the employee Greg who should not be dealing with customers.
On September 16, my husband brought our 1998 Chevrolet Malibu to Anthony's for an oil change. Starting the next day, the oil pressure light started coming on. In 21 years of owing this car I had never seen that light come on. I kept telling him that he should take it back to see what had happened, since this only started after the oil change.
On October 1, my husband was driving our boys to soccer practice when my son Facetimes me because a light came on. I got very scared when I saw that the temperature light was on and the needle was all the way to the red edge. I told him to stop driving; luckily he was at the field by that time. I canceled the classes I had to teach that night to drive over and bring him coolant. He filled the coolant tank and drove home. During that drive, the oil pressure light came on again. On Wednesday, October 2 my husband to the car back to Anthony's. He was told that he would receive a call in 3 hours letting him know what was wrong and to get permission to make repairs. The car is old and nearing it's end of life, even though it only has about 65,000 miles on it. We can't drive it too far because it does not have top tethers so I can't put a proper seat for my 6 year old and it can't be retrofitted at this point. By Thursday afternoon we hadn't heard anything from Anthony's, so my husband called them in front of me around 11:30am. He was told that they hadn't looked at it yet and as soon as they took a look they would call back and let us know what was wrong and ask if we wanted to fix it. Never heard anything. On Friday, October 4, we drove down to Anthony's around 2pm to find out the status of the car since we still hadn't gotten a call from them. Greg told us that he had great news; he was able to get the car fixed and we owed $886 dollars. I was stunned. That day I was worrying about how I would buy groceries because I don't get paid until the end of October, and even then what we owed is almost my entire paycheck. I was still so shocked that I just said we'll come back when we have the money.
Over the weekend I did some research and discovered that it is illegal to make repairs without the authorization of the car owner. I spoke with the DMV, and they told me it was illegal and that I should pay for the repairs and then send in the receipt showing what was done along with a complaint form. Fortunately my husband was able to get a loan from family members in Mexico, but with a high interest rate and we were losing money off the bat on that because of the exchange rate from pesos to dollars.
On Wednesday, October 9 we finally had the money in our bank account and drove yet again to Anthony's. When we arrived, I asked Greg why the repairs had been done without our consent. He started almost yelling at us that he did receive permission, and that he called us numerous times. He told us that the car had been having trouble since we brought it to them 1,000 miles ago. When I first arrived in Connecticut, I brought the car to Anthony's for an inspection to be able to change the registration from NY to CT. There were no problems with the car at that time, and I never took it there again because I was going to a different mechanic. Since he stated that he had called us numerous times, I asked him when exactly he called because we have no record of any calls on our phone. I showed him the call log on my husband's phone which only showed the call we made to him. He then denied what he just said about numerous calls and told us that he spoke with my husband when he went in and that my husband agreed to repairs up to $750. When I told him that the repairs were more than what he stated had been agreed to so they should not have been done, he started stuttering and yelling at us that he had gotten permission. He just kept repeating that my husband had given him permission. I had my 20 month old with me and he was getting cranky so I finally just said fine, we'll pay. He then stated that we had to pay cash; he refused to accept a credit card from us even though the business accepts credit card, which he had told us on Friday.
We had to go back out in the pouring rain, get in our car, and drive to the bank to get cash. When I got to the bank it was a few minutes past closing, but luckily the employees at Milford Bank are great and they let me in when they saw I was practically crying. I explained the situation, and they wanted to make sure that I was comfortable giving cash to this shady business. I got the money, we drove back in the rain to Anthony's, I paid him the cash and we got our car. To top things off, one of the items they supposedly repaired was NOT repaired. Save yourself the headache and stay away from this horrid place. read more