Beware - Blatant Dishonesty from their GM - read below w/ documentation
TL/DL: We brought the car to have the AC fixed, wheel alignment, and diagnose an unknown issue causing the RPMs to jitter when accelerating. They lied about parts they replaced, made no impact on the alignment, and avoided actually diagnosing the jittering. Took it to the dealership, they fixed it proper the first time and properly diagnosed the jittering (misfire on a cylindar requiring new ignition coil and spark plugs). Area Manager & Corporate don't respond either, you're always at risk to get taken advantage of with no recourse or accountability using ANY FIRESTONE location.
I've been going to this Firestone location since 2012 when we first moved back to Florida. I used to work on cars as a hobby, I've owned many 90's muscle cars and did a lot of the work myself and with friends. Sean Bishop was the GM back then and was always honest, up front, and stood by the work. If they diagnosed an issue, replaced the parts to resolve, and the issue persisted - they would work with me on the financial impact (often waiving labor/parts or both) to honor the job.
I'm not a chump when it comes to cars, I have less hobby time with a full time career and kids now so I don't work on cars as I used to.
As we've purchased new cars, we used the manufacturer warranty to cover repairs and maintenance, as those were bonus perks upon purchasing a new car. Hence, a few years have lapsed between my last visits to this location and today with new management.
Even with warranties, we've still come to Firestone to buy new tires. It's incredibly HARD to find a trustworthy shop, unfortunately, so I've been happy to keep my non-warranty, paid business with this shop.
My wife's car has been having AC issues for the last year or so. Mainly in that it loses the charge over a 6-8 month period. We've brought it in two times in the last two years to have it re-charged and have them load in the special Dye to look for leaks. The first time we did this, they saw no leaks so we chalked it up to old age (70k miles) that it needed a recharge. The second time it required a re-charge, we did the same thing again. This time, life got in the way and we were unable to bring it back the 2 weeks later - the charge held.
We brought the car in a few weeks ago because the AC was no longer blowing cold air to the driver's side of the car, only the passenger side. We told this to Raul and their technician, they recommended changing the "high side and low side valves" on the AC. We also had them do an alignment on the car because we were holding the steering wheel at an angle to keep it driving straight. Lastly, the car started having a jittering issue, coincidentally a few weeks after we had the transmission replaced (via car insurance for road hazard damage).
We agreed to have them perform the work and paid roughly $850 for everything.
When we picked up the car again, the AC was blowing WORSE than when we brought it in. It was also making a new hissing/pressurizing sound that did not seem normal inside the cabin. Additionally, we were still holding the steering wheel the same way as if the alignment never happened. They were also unable to reproduce the jittering.
They agreed to do the re-alignment as it was under the 1-year alignment warranty that comes with an alignment by default.
We drove their tech around to reproduce the jittering issue so they knew what to look for, we indicated it could be the transmission but we were not sure and wanted their opinion before bringing it back to the dealership.
They came back to us stating the AC needed 2 suction lines replaced, for $800. I asked them if they definitively knew this was the issue and they told me yes. I pressed them more asking why it wouldn't have come up from the dye each time and if they saw the leak this time. They told me that this was definitely the issue with the AC.
They told me they re-did the alignment but the tires need replacement for it to actually hold (they're probably 5k away from replacement).
They charged me $60 to tell me they're not sure what's wrong with the transmission and that they don't do any work on that anyways.
At this point something felt very wrong as some of this info was not adding up and it felt like we were taking shots in the dark to try and fix the issues we're having - all at high price points for each shot.
I took it to the dealership to have them evaluate my two primary concerns - jittering issue and the AC blowing warm.
The AC condenser inside the dashboard was the issue, $1500 to replace that (dealer labor obv. is expensive) and everything is working 100%, no weird hissing/pressurizing sounds and the air is again consistently cold and operational.
They drove the car around with their computer hooked up to see real time errors because our car had not been throwing any codes at any point. They diagnosed cylindar 3 was misfiring under certain conditions and recommended chan read more