Every mechanic I've ever been to has been a bad experience, but Bergen Auto Specialist is by far the worst. My car has everything under the sun wrong with lt, but I only called about the two most prominent issues: exploded EGR valve & degraded heater hose. I had already long since given up on this abysmal car, but someone adamantly recommended this place (for whatever reason). It's not the farthest in the world, so I taped up the valve & hose just to barely get there. It stalled several times on the way there, but fortunately I didn't have to do any engine maintenance.
Once I got there, I told the cashier about the issues. Decent enough dude; I have no issues with him. So I dropped lt off, walked 30 minutes home & went back to sleep around 10:30 after receiving less than four hours of sleep.
At about 11:30, I received a call from the cashier, saying that lt will be $175 to replace the EGR valve. It's an immediate red flag when a car has a million issues & lt costs almost $200 just to fix the most recent one, so I looked up EGR valves for a 2001 Ford Escape. Guess what. About $40. Would you pay almost four times the price for something you can easily replace for significantly cheaper? Naturally, I politely decided not to go forward with the valve on account of the price; & to instead focus on the hose, which has been the most prominent issue for years.
So the cashier relayed this information to his boss. Thirty minutes later, I got another call. It was from the boss. The very first thing he did was confirm whether or not I actually said I chose not to proceed with the valve on account of the price, since this is apparently unfathomable to him. And this is the point where this place lost all sense of professionalism.
Immediately losing all maturity, the boss said to pick up the car in thirty minutes, because I was 'wasting his time'. I assured him that I'm not trying to waste his time & that I wish to focus on the hose. He responded very dogmatically & angrily, essentially saying the same thing as before & saying "Go order parts online then. I'm not working on your car.".
So sleep was out the window, because I had to make the thirty minute trek back over there. I got there & the car was sitting there, window open, door unlocked, key in ignition. A better car would have been stolen under those circumstances.
And so, I had to drive the rapidly deteriorating car home. On the way back, lt stalled several times & 3/4 of the way there, lt slowed to less than 20 mph. And I had to wait a good thirty minutes for parking to open up, while writing this review.
Are all these bad things that happened the boss's fault? Not necessarily. But I should not have had to deal with them & I wouldn't have, lf not for his shenanigans & lack of emotional control. The last thing that a driver of a horribly dysfunctional car wants to deal with when taking the car to a mechanic is to have the mechanic refuse to serve & to have to take the car back home, all while lt rapidly deteriorates from STILL not getting repaired. The very least a mechanic should do is fix something, however small. This place did nothing. Now the car is in worse shape than when lt got there, all because the boss didn't learn in kindergarten not to get offended by simple logic.
I recommend going to any mechanic over this one. They're all scammers, but at least most of them actually do something. I suggest ignoring the four five star reviews, which are most likely bought & paid for. It's suspicious enough that only four people reviewed & every single one of them five stars. But what's way more suspicious is that lt has four five star reviews on another site, from 'different' reviewers. This place got caught in a scam & the boss reacted the exact same way that an online check scammer did when I confronted him: defensive & irrational.
I wish these people well in life, but that shop needs to close down, because lt isn't fair to people stuck with the horrible burdens of dysfunctional cars, who already have enough of a bad time as lt is. The best thing you can do: learn how to DIY. But God help you lf you have no reliable parking for a dysfunctional car. read more
