All things considered, I've only had one experience with this shop, but my experience at Gateway Auto; like any car problems, started with a car that died on me for unknown reasons, along with a broken heater around November.
Let me be clear, the staff here are friendly as could be, which I appreciate but that made no impact on my overall service. I'll explain what I mean: after a few days for diagnosis I called to see what was up, they had done a few minor things like replaced my spark plugs & flushed my coolant, but my car & heater were running- as they described, after a test around the block.
I paid the shop $10 shy of $500 with financing; yes, FIVE hundred for the services I described above plus labor, got my car back, and drove it for less than a day before I had to be towed back home with a dead car. This happened twice in a week before I was able to get it back to Gateway.
I asked if it could be looked at again, apparently it hadn't been fixed. I was told a few possible reasons why this constant stalling may be happening, given the mechanic's own similar make/year's issues, and that we need to replace the radiator (there was a small leak) before they'd actually consider another look at it. That's an impossible sale!
After talking with my family, one of whom's a certified mechanic, I realized that this was a nice way of dancing around saying, "I don't know and there's no way we'll fix it for free regardless of your repair last week..."
So we wound up replacing the radiator ourselves. Since also replacing the distributor as instructed by another shop after one look, she's been running like a charm!
I will never go back to this shop, nor would I recommend it to anybody I know or otherwise.
Had they even offered a discount for this extra radiator fix that they lacked the foresight to mention at the beginning, I might have considered. But considering the five hundred dollars I paid for 4 spark plugs, a liter of coolant, and not to mention the proceeding three tows I needed for my STILL broken car after seeing Gateway Auto--I'd say go to a place that's more thorough with what they think is completed, and more helpful when it's obviously not completed.
Overall, this shop caused me more problems than anything with their hefty price tag and apparently more sales-oriented customer service. Don't go, unless money is no object to you and/or you'd love being run-around on at least one occasion. read more