My experience with The Car Doctor was very poor. I brought in my 1995 Porsche 911 to have the convertible top fixed. They said that one of the motors for one side of the convertible top was bad and that in these cases it is best practice to replace BOTH motors. It would cost $2,500 to repair. The work was supposedly done and it was driven back to my storage facility by the manager of that facility. Ryan Pilla, the head mechanic at The Car Doctor, told me that the vehicle required an additional $6,500 more in a variety of repairs, some of which I knew had to be done, and I agreed to have those extra repairs done, since I had not spent any money on the car in 13 years . I had a mechanic from the Car Doctor go and pick the car back up from the storage facility to do the extra work. The Car Doctor performed the extra work (which had nothing to do with the convertible top) and kept the car there until I went out to the Hamptons to pick up the car about a month later.
Upon starting the car, I began to put the top back down; however only ONE motor worked! The other was still broken, even though I had paid $2,500 for BOTH motors to be fixed. The result was that the top was only being pulled up on one side and the top snapped in half! This happened RIGHT IN FRONT of the mechanic!
To be clear, the top had not been used since The Car Doctor supposedly fixed it two months prior. The car was driven exactly ONCE, for half an hour, by the storage facility employee, who drove it from The Car Doctor to the storage facility, before then being driven back to The Car Doctor about one month later by one of their own mechanics for the $6,500 of further repairs.
Since the top snapped in half right in front of the mechanic on duty I assumed I would have no problem getting them to REFIX the top without charge. However, after several days, Ryan Pilla told me that I would have to pay for the broken top because they DID fix it and it MUST HAVE BEEN BROKEN by the guy who drove it back to the storage facility! For the record the man who drove it says that he did NOT have the top up at all when he drove it back to the storage facility. I then responded that surely his work must be covered under a WARRANTY of some sort that would last more than half an hour, to which he said he would have to get back to me.
He then called me back to inform me that he had only fixed ONE convertible top motor, and that I had not paid to have both motors repaired, which was patently false! Unfortunately for me I did not keep the original bill, and The Car Doctor refuses, after a dozen attempts by me, to provide another copy. However, I am certain, with 100% confidence that Mr. Pilla told me over the phone when I first brought the car in that it was best practice to repair both motors, and that the $2,500 was payment FOR repairing BOTH motors. After he told me that they had only fixed one motor, I said, "but then you could not have possibly allowed the car to leave the premises if the top did not work, right?", to which he replied, that when the car had left his premises two months before, the top DID in fact work and that it must have been the second, unrepaired motor, which he claims I did not pay to have fixed, gave out RIGHT AFTER leaving the premises! It would HAVE to be RIGHT after, since the car was driven exactly TWO times since leaving The Car Doctor...a half hour trip to the storage facility and then back again to The Car Doctor one month later, by the Car Doctor mechanic, for the $6,500 of other repairs.
So instead of acknowledging that they were paid to fix both convertible top motors and failed to do so, Mr. Pilla claims that the unrepaired motor which WORKED when the car left their premises all of the sudden, in the HALF HOUR that it was driven by a non Car Doctor employee to the storage facility, broke!
The end result of this fiasco is that I wound up bringing my car to another dealer who had to charge me $8,000 to completely replace the convertible top. Although, even without a bill, standard industry pricing would confirm that $2,500 is about double to pay for just one convertible top motor being fixed.
Overall, they were a horror to deal with, their work was poor, and as I found out when I arrived to pick the car up, the pressure from Mr Pilla to to do even MORE repairs was relentless. The serviceman at Storms Motors informed me that I was certainly far from the first person to come to him with similar complaints about The Car Doctor. Sure, he is a competitor, but I have learned a lesson regarding using authorized dealers versus independents to fix your car...if you choose the latter, make sure you know who you are dealing with before going down that road. I THINK ANYONE WHO GOES TO THE CAR DOCTOR AFTER READING THIS REVIEW NEEDS TO ALSO GO TO A PSYCHIATRIC DOCTOR. read more
