From February 2020 through October 2021, my catalytic converter was stolen three times. (The third…read moretime, I had an anti-theft shield, but the thieves cut the CC up within the shield and fished it out in parts.) When I got it repaired and a new shield installed in 2021, I hoped the new anti-theft additions to the shield would mean I'd never again experience the dreaded no-catalytic-converter roar when I started my car. I was lucky for a while, and even in my year-and-a-half in the Mission District, which has a far higher rate of auto theft and vandalism than my original/current neighborhood, my CC survived.
Unfortunately, within a few weeks of moving back to my rebuilt flat, my old neighborhood welcomed me back by stealing my CC for the fourth time! This time, however, the insurance company totaled my car. Although I bought the car back from them, I would need to get my title changed to a salvage title and eventually to a revived title.
That's where Advance Auto Care comes in. You see, even though my 2025 CC-less car was largely identical to my 2021 CC-less car, the California DMV considers total losses to be something requiring all kinds of fees, inspections, and paperwork. In order to keep my car on the road, I would need to get it VIN-confirmed (TBD), smog-checked (done), and safety-inspected (done, hence this review).
I figured the safety inspection would be just a formality, but it's a little bit more complicated and a lot more expensive than that. You can only get your vehicle inspected at specific shops, and while the DMV website claims that inspections range from $80 to $100, I found some shops that were charging almost $350 and none that were charged less than $200.
I called Advance Auto Care, and they said they could do an inspection for $280, to be paid whether or not I passed. They said it was first come, first served, so I picked a day and drove to the location in the Bayview on their Yelp listing. But their Yelp listing was more than a decade old, and they had since moved to 3rd Street on the Central Waterfront. So I had to drive all the way there. They took my car, and I took the train to Dogpatch and found someplace to eat. Less than an hour later, they called me and told me my car was ready to be picked up. I was elated because the person didn't say anything about my car failing the test, but I asked anyway, and he said, "No, you didn't pass. You need front brakes and you need to fix your tire-pressure sensor." Way to bury the lede, bro.
I would have needed new brakes no matter what, so my car would not have passed the test, but I really wish I would have known that the stupid sensor light was an issue. See, old Priuses were designed stupidly. Each tire has a sensor that determines the tire pressure, and it if gets too low, a light on your dashboard lights up. Ridiculously, the light doesn't indicate *which* tire's pressure is low, and each of those sensors has a battery, and each of those batteries will die eventually, so even if your tire pressure is fine, you'll have a "safety" light on your dashboard on when those sensor batteries die, and you'll have no idea which one(s) is/are dead. So because of a stupid car design, I spent $280 that I didn't need to spend, because I should have known that my car wouldn't pass the inspection, and come to think of it, the moment the technician turned on the ignition, he should have told me that and saved me some money.
Anyway, I had to get the front brakes done and a pressure-sensor battery replaced (with two of the three remaining having low batteries as well) at another shop, mainly because Advance Auto Care didn't have time to do my brakes within a week.
I eventually had to do the whole rigamarole over again, right down to the AAC guy calling me and telling me my car was ready again without telling me whether it had passed. Thankfully, it did this time, but I paid a total of $560 to this place for what amounted to a single inspection, because the second time, the light clearly wasn't on, and I could prove that another garage had fixed my brakes.
I'm not claiming that Advance Auto Care did anything illegal or wrong, and I knew that I would have to pay for the test even if the car didn't pass, but a little warning about any of the dashboard lights would have been helpful.
The two men I dealt with were efficient, and both inspections were completed quickly. Strangely, I paid when I picked up my car the first time, but the second time, I had to pay before the inspection. I'm not sure why.
And if you're wondering why I took it back to the place that annoyed me, I felt that I needed to, because a different shop might have found an additional problem, whereas if AAC had still failed the car, then I could make a colorable argument for why it should have passed--or if it had failed because of either of the original problems, I could get the mechanic that did the repairs to pay for the additional inspections.
