Had a Subaru that turned but wouldn't start. Did some diagnostics myself - figured out it had spark, narrowed it down to a fuel issue. Didn't have the tools to completely diagnose whether it was a fuse / relay / power or a problem with the pump itself, so I called up Capital based on recommendations from another shop I trusted.
Called on a Thursday to make the appointment. They have their own tow service, but they said to call them tomorrow morning and have them tow it in at 7. They refused to take the car in before the scheduled shop appointment, and wouldn't take an appointment to pick up the car either. Okay, fine, my wife has to wake up at 6am anyway. We call them. The driver shows up too late to get our car in at the appointment time. Sure, whatever, he was still early enough to give my wife a ride to work on time, which is something they didn't have to do.
10~am rolls around and the service shop finally realizes they don't have the key to even try to start the car. The tow truck driver has it. For some reason, they tell my wife this and have her call, instead of calling the tow truck company themselves. I don't know when they finally got the key, but by the time my wife got off work (6pm), the only work they'd done on the car was to diagnose the problem - which given all of the information we provided them, shouldn't have taken all day.
I call to check on the car Saturday afternoon. Turns out the mechanics keep separate hours from the gas station, and they neglected to tell me this. They didn't have any new information for me other than "the mechanic is coming in on his day off to look at your car". I call later that same day, I get a very confused gas attendant who doesn't know what's going on with the car at all. They ask if they can call back, so I let them go. 45 minutes after the time they said they'd call, my wife gives them another jingle, and gets a very rude man who "doesnt know nothin 'bout that" when she asked what was going on with our car. After some back and forth, apparently the mechanic was sick, came in and did some work on it, and then left without telling anyone what was going on with it.
No work was done on the car on Sunday, even though all sources point to them being open on Sunday.
Monday comes around, my wife shows up early in the morning. The car had started without them performing any work on it at all, so they took this as a sign to just give the car back to us without doing anything to it. Maybe something was frozen in the gas tank, and having it in their shop long enough to thaw it out solved the problem? Maybe there's something else seriously wrong with the car. Based on the information they gave us, I'll never know. The check engine light is still on and they didn't clear the code or tell us what code was still stored in the memory of the computer.
The most charitable thing I can say about these guys is they didn't charge me for the "work" they performed, but I'm still out the towing fee - paid to the towing company they also own, of course. They advised the car was "not safe to drive" and offered to fix the other problem they just so happened to find. We declined, as they didn't even fix the original problem that led to us making an appointment with them. I suspect they routinely take on more work than they have time to do, and with how long it took them to diagnose what should've been a simple issue, I suspect they don't even have basic diagnostic equipment you can order off of amazon or buy at a local parts store off the shelf. I won't be trusting these guys for any serious car work, especially not after reading reviews from other websites about this business. read more