I'll start this off by noting that we (my wife and I) have been John's good-paying CCM Transmission…read morecustomers for a little over 10 years. In that entire time, other than their one misdiagnoses of my 1999 Chevy K1500 running rough and hesitating, when they told me "there was a problem with my new engine", then after I flatbedded it to another shop affiliated with Summit Racing (in order for them to warrantee my engine issue), it turned out to simply be a bad distributor. Besides that, there have been no issues at all, and they have successfully done some in-depth troubleshooting on my older vehicles that multiple other shops were unable to figure out and fix.
On Wednesday 8/21/2024, I dropped my pickup off at CCM Transmission, for a Thursday 8/22/2024 afternoon diagnosis and repair for non-functioning cruise control. Thursday late afternoon, John (the owner) called me, and told me they'd diagnosed it, and that the ECM (Engine Control Module) is bad and is not communicating with the Cruise Control Module. So the next day, on Friday 8/23/2024, John ordered a replacement ECU for my truck.
The following Friday 8/30/2024, with my truck still at John's shop (waiting for the ordered replacement ECM to arrive), I had my neighbor take me to Walgreens (right past John's shop) so I could pick up my medication. On our way back from Walgreens, we saw my truck sitting outside John's shop, right in front of one of the garage doors. So, figuring that the truck's replacement ECU might be done, we pulled into the shop's parking lot. As we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a *huge* dent in the passenger-side bed of my truck that was *not* there when I dropped the truck off. After waiting for 10 minutes for John to get off of the phone call that he was on, I asked him why there was a huge dent in the bed of my truck? He nonchalantly replied "Oh I accidently hit something in the parking lot with it, but don't worry, I know someone that does bodywork, and once it's fixed it will look just like it did before". At no point did it ever occur to John to even apologize for irresponsibly damaging my truck, and he clearly just assumed that it was up to him to him to dictate to me who would be fixing the damage to it that *he* had caused.
I responded with "I'm sorry John, but I don't want your friend fixing it, I want *my* body guy to fix it properly and without 10lbs of Bondo in it. That bedside had no bondo in it before, and I don't want any in it now. I want it fixed properly, and if that entails pulling the bed off the frame and replacing the bed with a used bed in order to fix it right, then so be it". John immediately began rudely arguing with me, telling me "it's an old truck anyways, the bedside already has a few dings in the bedrail already, some bondo in the bed isn't going to hurt it". I replied with "I'm sorry John, but it's *my* truck that you've damaged, and that is unacceptable; it will be fixed properly, the way I want it fixed". John immediately began yelling at me, telling me "that my truck would be fixed however he saw fit, and there's no way in hell that he was ever paying for the bed to be pulled off, and that as a matter of fact, he wasn't going to do the ECU replacement (that my truck had been sitting there for a week waiting to have done), he was returning the ECU (that had arrived to his shop that day) to wherever he got it, and I was banned from his shop for good".
By that point, I was beyond disgusted with John and his completely offensive, impenitent, unwarranted treatment of me. Before I removed my truck from his premises, I wanted there to be an official record of the damage he caused to my truck, so I called the Sherrif's Department. A Sherriff came out, looked at the damage, and told me "well obviously the damage is the Owner's fault; I'll file my report and you can pick it up on Tuesday, and you may as well take your truck out of here, since he's refusing to fix it". So rather than stick around and treat John disrespectfully as he did to me (for no valid reason), I took my truck elsewhere.
CCM Transmission's Insurance Co. (Federated Insurance) called to arrange a meeting to estimate damage on my truck. They estimated the damage & cut me a $4,000.00 check. The estimate only covers the existing bed to be repaired (with Bondo and paint). Since no one makes the replacement passenger-side bedside (GM Part#15678728) anymore, I bought a used, clean replacement bed for $2,000.00. The $2,000.00 balance will go towards paint and labor, with FE supplementing any extra.
Moral of the story; think long and hard about bringing your vehicle to CCM Transmission for anything, because when push comes to shove, there's always the possibility that your vehicle for which you've paid a lot of money, will be badly damaged when you go to pick it up, and you too may wind up on the wrong, undeserving end of John's irrational, bizarre temper-tantrum, despite doing absolutely nothing wrong.
