!!!WARNING...DO NOT BUY A CAR FROM THIS BUSINESS! Tom the owner of Auto Repair Specialists is not trustworthy or reliable!!!!!
(Please note that Auto Repair Specialists used to be known as Mulqueen & Mitchell Auto Repair, East Norwalk CT )
If I could leave a negative ten-star review, I would have done so!
By way of background, we had been bringing our cars to Tom (the owner) for repairs for probably 3-4 years and initially, he seemed like a really good guy who was very honest and reliable. Based on his track record with our car repairs, we decided to buy a used car from him.
We test drove the car and it seemed to be in good condition - Tom really confirmed that it was a great car. After doing a little research on Consumer Reports combined with Tom's reputation, we felt very comfortable with making the purchase.
I purchased the car on a credit card because I was not going to be back in the area for about a week (BTW, Tom charges a transaction fee of a couple of hundred dollars if you use a credit card). We had to make arrangements to pick up the car on a weekend when the shop was closed due to my work schedule.
So Tom said he would leave the keys in the car under the driver's seat. What he conveniently forgot to tell us is that he had only one key fob for the car. When I contacted him on Monday to ask about the spare key, he said that he never said that he had a second key fob and that he was selling the car as is.
TRULY UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
You think he could have told us this factor BEFORE we bought the car!!! But because we thought he was so trustworthy, we presumed that he was being fully transparent and that we could rely on him...obviously NOT the case.
We had to waste a lot more time working directly with a dealer to obtain another key fob which cost about $350.00!
On top of this, the car (which Tom had inspected and assured us was in great shape) started to have issues a few months later with the electrical system and signals. Good old reliable Tom was not interested in helping us out...he said he sold the car "As Is" and offered no type of discount to repair the car - this new bill was about another $1200.00!!!
At this point, I wanted nothing more to do with good old reliable Tom but because we had his mechanic diagnose the problem, he was going to charge us a couple of hundred dollars for the mechanic review so we went forward with the repair.
Needless to say....learn from my mistake....do yourself a favor and DO NOT buy a car from this bum. Do not walk away from Tom....run away and do not look back!!!!
(I have actually never left any type of review before for any type of service anywhere on the internet but since Tom was such a bum with this transaction, I felt I needed to leave this feedback for the public.) read more