My husband is a mechanic. He has been ASE certified, went to school for it and everything, we run a small shop from home. We have done all work on our 2018 Equinox (it has 152k miles on it) that we bought from Garber in 2018. In June our transmission blew while on vacation, we came home, and we replaced that ourselves. The transmission we put in worked great. We had a small exhaust spot that needed to be repaired but wasn't an issue just made her a little loud and there was a little tick that we knew was the flywheel but again not causing any issues. I want to point out OUR CAR WAS RUNNING AND OPERATING COMPLETLY FINE BEFORE WE TOOK IT TO GARBER. We use it for delivery routes and all of our daily driving and was working fine. We took it to Garber for service August 5th because we noticed our timing was starting to slip and wanted to get it taken care of before it broke. We had already bought all of the parts required from Garbers parts department. She's a great car and was running like a champ before we took it in. We were just getting the timing done because we didn't want to get rid of her. Getting the timing chain replaced is a job that a "master technician" should be able to do. They originally told us they would have our car for a day; they had it for two. On August 7th, we picked up the car and the engine immediately started missing and the engine light came on. We didn't even make it down Indianapolis to Ridge Road before it was undriveable with zero acceleration. We returned the car immediately to the service manager we were dealing with. There was no engine light on when we brought the car in. There were no major issues on the car that would have prevented us from driving it. Hell, we drove it to the lot for service when we dropped it off.
When we dropped it off the 2nd time it was 4pm and we were told we would hear back from them that night after the "master technician" looked at it, at 6:30 pm that night we still hadn't heard anything. We asked about a courtesy vehicle and were told they were all out. So we had to pay for a rental car. We finally heard back from the service manager on August 8th at 7:50 am. And he proceeded to argue with us and blamed us for the problems. He said that the engine light was the knock sensor and that was being caused by the flywheel, which is impossible as seeing that the flywheel was ticking since June and didn't cause a single problem before they touched it. The knock code can however be caused by the timing chain not being properly done. A tight-feeling engine, limited acceleration and a knock sensor code after a timing chain replacement means there is improper timing alignment. If the timing chain wasn't done perfectly, the camshaft or crankshaft timing marks misaligned, it can lead to incorrect valve timing. When we brought this up to the general manager, he proceeded to tell us we were just reading misinformation on the internet. We were reading from the all-data program, not just random stuff on the internet.
We were charged $2,739.56 for the work Garber did which included a charge for oil and for parts we already supplied them with. We went to the office and had a meeting with the "master technician", his service manager and the general manager. When we asked about this specific charge the service manager told us that it was a normal part of doing the timing chain, to drain the oil and that's why we were charged for oil. We asked the "master technician" when the service manager left the room if that was a true statement and he said no. His exact answer was "no, I dropped a gasket and had to drain it to get it out." They also flashed our computer since the transmission wasn't our original one to make it match the rest of the vehicle. They never once asked us if we wanted this and we never asked for this. It is generally unrecommended to do so, because it can cause problems with your car. They kept insisting it was the knock sensor and were desperate to change that. They also argued with us that we purposely cleared any codes we had before we brought the car in so we could pull one over on them. Which is not what happened. We literally unhooked the battery because we were going to do the timing ourselves and realized we needed a specific tool for the fuel injectors removal and hooked it back up since we figured the tool cost as much as we were quoted from Garber to do the job which was $1,600. The tool itself was maybe $200 less than that. We were thinking we would say ourselves time by letting the dealership do it since they already have the tool and it was going to cost about the same. The service manager belittled and was condescending to everyone in the room the entire time. He said, "my "master technician" is a better mechanic then you will ever be he went to GM school 10 years ago." They not once ever test drove the vehicle before they started working on it. MY REVIEW IS LONGER BUT TO LONG FOR YELP. read more