Awful, awful AWFUL experience with this shop - the worst. As another reviewer said, are all these five stars being written by friends and relatives? Someone else alluded to the changing of the guard taking place at CHA and the fact that good service of yore has gone away. Whatever the reason, in my near half century of life on this earth, this has been one of the worst auto-repair nightmares I've experienced. I think perhaps it's, at least in small part, due to the fact that I'm female and they know they can tell me pretty much anything since it's clear that I've chosen not to use my limited cranial capacity on automotive know-how.
We purchased an old Mercedes (big mistake, but that's another story) and the previous owner highly recommended CHA as the best place to have it serviced. He had a binder full of receipts going back many years so I figured that I might as well keep taking the car to this shop, since they're familiar with it.
Two weeks into ownership the car won't start and, to keep the story short[er], we had it towed to CHA for repair. The bill was close to $2,000 with a laundry list of problems that were fixed. As I was paying the bill the mechanic mentioned that, oh by the way, the wipers also need to be replaced. Not sure why they didn't do it along with the other stuff but, sure, we might as well replace the wipers.
Well, they not only charged me for the wipers (which I expected) but they also charge a FEE - $10 - to replace the blades, which I did NOT expect. I have never had an auto shop charge me labor to put new wipers on! And I certainly was surprised that, after spending close to $2,000 at CHA, they would charge me another $10 to replace the wipers!! A teenager who was hanging around behind the counter replaced the wipers and it took him all of three minutes.
Perhaps the reason he did it so quickly is that he did it incorrectly. We had to bring the car back TWO more times just to have the wipers re-installed. (A huge hassle for people who have jobs, with all the dropping off and picking up.) For some reason they just couldn't get it right, the wipers would either fall off or hit each other. The wipers are a little tricky it this car, so I let it slide, although the increasingly annoying memory of the $10 fee should have clued me to the fact that things were not as they should be. We ALSO had to bring the car back it several more times to correct some mistakes the mechanic had made. While they didn't charge for the re-repairs, the fact that it happened (along with the wiper problem) should have been a red flag.
A few weeks go by and the car starts making troublesome noises. We take it it in to CHA, albeit with a lack of enthusiasm do to the previous screw-ups and the annoying damn $10 wiper fee, and ask them to take a look at it and give us an estimate. They called later that day with an outrageous figure at which point we said, no thanks, as our old mechanic (who I had just called) said he could do it for a third of the price.
We get to CHA and they tell us it'll be $100 to bail the car out, since they performed some expensive diagnostics and we had to pay for that. Excuse me? We had asked for an ESTIMATE. Isn't this sort of shenanigan illegal? When you ask for an ESTIMATE it's understood that the mechanic calls you before performing any work that costs money. Un-freekin-believable!
We paid the money and got the hell out of there, not having the time and energy to make a scene. I've waited over a year to write this review, so that I could really cool my head and be fair. Nevertheless, Crown Hill Automotive ripped us off from the minute we came in, despite the fact they could have easily had a customer for life (at least the life of the car) if they had treated us fairly, as well as referrals from this happy customer. The $10 wiper install charge (I keep going back to that because it bugs me to no end) should have indicated the type of attitude they have when it comes to customer service. I wish I could give negative stars. Future customers, especially females (and I very, very rarely play the sexism card), beware! read more