I am strongly compelled to add my voice to the chorus of 1 star reviews on here.
The generator in my toy hauler quit producing power, so I called Bob's and made an appointment. I got an appointment for a week later and dropped it off at 8am when they opened. When you walk in, there is a 6 foot high "Trump 2020 - No More Bullshit" flag hanging in the lobby. There is a huge Rottweiler in a semi-cage-looking thing that is tall in the middle (presumably so customers don't try to pet him) but on the sides it is only three feet high, so he could easily get out. He gives a low pitched, menacing growl at each new person that joins the line. As I stood in line listening to Bob treat the customer in front of me with a rude tone and disrespectful attitude, my gut instinct said, "just leave, this is not going to end well..." This will be the last time I don't listen to my gut.
I dropped my keys with this rude gentleman and was told he would call me sometime today with his diagnosis. He did. He told me the circuit board needed to be replaced and his estimate was $700. He said it would take two days to get the part and he'd have me out by Friday afternoon. I told him to do it if he was sure it would fix the problem. He gruffly said, "I can't guarantee that this will fix it, but it is just the next step in the diagnosis." Feeling like I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted a working generator, I agreed.
By now I was feeling really suspicious about this whole affair, so I looked up his Yelp reviews. Oh, man, I was sick to my stomach reading them. 17 one-star reviews out of 26, all long, heart-felt narratives about being royally screwed by a convicted felon. That's right, two of the reviews alluded to the fact that Robert Carl Sedlmayr is in fact listed on https://www.city-data.com/so/so-Gardnerville-Nevada.html as a Tier 3 sex offender. He must report to the authorities every three months for the rest of his life to have his recent photo taken so his community can keep track of him. Tier 3 is the worst of the tiers reserved for the most serious offenses. I simply could not believe what I was reading. How could this man stay in business? The answer is; all the transient break-downs that come through G-Ville on 395. He is the only option for this unending stream of hapless victims. The handful of good reviews he has gotten have come from folks who didn't know how ripped off they were getting and were just grateful that someone saved them from a tough spot.
So now I'm sweating it out waiting for his call to say that the circuit board didn't fix it and we'd have to move on to replacing the stator for $2G. Fortunately, the circuit board did fix it and he said come and get it. Before I went, I looked up the cost of the circuit board online and found videos on how to replace it. The part ranges from $199 to $330 online and it is a 20 minute job to swap it out. Since all the other reviews talked about how he will add things to your repair that you did not request or authorize and double your bill, I was fully expecting him to do this to me as well. And sure enough, when I got there to settle up, he hands me a bill for $977.25 (see attached). He charged me $562.47 for the circuit board, and $258 dollars in labor for the 20 minute circuit board swap and an additional $69 in labor to replace my 30 amp cord plug which I did not request or authorize. So at $700, he was already raping me (pun intended) for double, but that wasn't good enough for him. He tried to triple it at $977.58. So I said, "Bob, I came here expecting to pay you $700 because that's what you told me it was going to be, even though I thought it sounded awfully high. You can't just arbitrarily charge me an extra $277.58 cuz ya feel like it. That's not how business works." So he says, "Fine, pay whatever you want." So I paid him the $700. This is definitely the first time that I've been charged double what I should have been, and actually felt lucky, like I dodged a bullet that could have been so much worse.
Nope, the story isn't over yet. I had not quite received the full Bob treatment that everyone else talks about in their reviews. So I'm outside hooking my rig to the Suburban when he comes out and says, "I looked it up and you're right, I told you $700. But I also replaced your 30 amp plug. Now I'm going to eat that cost, but in the future you need to take your business elsewhere. I've been in business here for 25 years and I don't deal with people who don't trust my word. You see all these other coaches here? Most of these people don't even get quotes from me, they just trust me to fix it for them and they pay whatever that costs."
Not wanting to engage in any further discussion with him, I said, "Fair enough", and away I went. I have finally learned my lesson about patronizing a business before reading the online reviews. Never again! read more