Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times? Well, I guess you've got to hand it to them. Us VW drivers (or former VW drivers like yours truly) love our cars, but also know that they have a tendency to start nickel and diming us slowly and steadily. Good Carma is one of many institutions in the Twin Cities metro that have tapped into this steady stream of cash. Sadly, this is the sort of shop that treats their customers like they were born yesterday.
I had a much-beloved Golf that required the standard degree of maintenance, and out of a certain mix of necessity and convenience (I worked up in NE at the time), I found myself calling Good Carma on a few different occasions. The first time or two I visited, things went as I'd expect; especially for a shop charging slightly more than the others.
But there are a few (my last 2, in fact) experiences there that really go beyond the pale. The first time around, I went in for a relatively simple job. I can't exactly recall what it was, to tell you the truth. What I do recall is that they ended up upselling me on a repair that I wasn't looking for, claiming that my car was "leaking oil" as a result. I've never been one to shirk on doing things correctly or completely the first time around so I agreed on the upsell and patiently waited the 5 days it took for them to fix my car.
When I went in to pick the car up, everything seemed to be in position. I wrote out a sizable check and optimistically hopped into my (so I thought) nicely-repaired car. On the ride home, I thought I smelled burning oil. Since the oil leak that my car supposedly suffered from had been so expertly repaired, I knew it couldn't be me. So I went about my nightly tasks, only stopping when the unthinkable happened. I turned a corner and my oil light came on, ostensibly because the oil level dropped below the threshold as what was left sloshed in the pan. I got home, fetched a flashlight and took a glance underneath the car to see what I dreaded. It looked like an oil bomb had exploded underneath my car. I had no idea what was going on, but slept on it and got on the horn to my pals at Good Carma the next day.
Rather than apologizing profusely, I was told that the issue very likely had nothing to do with the work they had done. And if I could get the car over there that day, they "might" be able to look at it later. This required agonizingly limping it over with a few quarts of oil on hand to keep the engine lubricated as it spattered oil all over its engine compartment.
The good news is that the car made it. And somebody in there confirmed that the issue was indeed caused by a defective part. And to their credit, they set things right for me, though the car smelled of burned oil until the day I sold it. And I always had to wonder whether or not I really needed the work that they upsold me on. I checked my oil regularly and never noticed it being down more than the expected amount.
Another interesting anecdote is that I heard the company's spiel about a repair they'd done on a different customer's car on an occasion that I waited for my car to be brought out. It's clear that customers are not held in the highest of esteem over at GC.
And the final bit of hilarity that drove the nail into the Good Carma coffin was when my original exhaust rusted through. Figuring they owed me at least one solid favor after the oil debacle, I went in. I received the same indifferent treatment as ever, and was told that I needed a $1200 cat-back replacement, if I was "lucky." The way they saw it, I'd need to replace the cat, too, for another $800 or so.
I know a steaming load of bull when I smell it. I took the job to a shop with more scruples and they welded in a new piece of metal for me for pennies. It held beautifully until the day I sold the car.
My advice to you? Take your work to South Central Imports or VW Man and save yourself the drama. read more
