HEED MY REVIEW AND GO ELSEWHERE...or don't, totally up to you.
Bought a Groupon for an oil change. The oil change took an hour and a half, and I was the only customer so I became a little skeptical. After paying for the oil change plus $16 for the additional quarts of oil I left and drove 3 miles to my house. Upon arrival my car indicated that I was one quart low of oil. Realizing that they were amateurs I assumed they did not compensate for the oil that goes into the filter so I stopped and picked up a quart and added it myself. The next morning at work my wife sent me a picture she had taken of our garage floor showing oil spilled all over it. I looked under my car to find it coated in oil! I took it back and they said that they get bad filters all of the time and they would fix it no problem. After waiting over an hour the guy told me that he couldn't tell where the leak was because there was so much oil sprayed all over the engine and for me to leave the car for them to fix and they would call me. They called 7 hours later and said my car was ready for pickup; that the problem was they didn't realize that most BMW oil filters have an oil ring gasket, which immediately raised red flags telling me that they did not install the proper filter because it comes with both Oil ring gaskets so they would have at the very least seen the gaskets in the box. I picked my car up, drove it home, and parked it in the garage with cardboard underneath to see if it leaked overnight. In the morning I discovered the cardboard saturated with oil. This time I added over 3 quarts of oil in order to get it up the street to another shop. There they opened the hood and were appalled at what they saw and when they opened at the oil filter compartment they were even more flabbergasted. To their professional eyes it was immediately apparent it was a used filter. I'm sure it's the original filter. He wrenched the lid to the oil filter compartment so tight that at first they thought that it was glued on. Luckily they were able to free it without damaging it. They did a complete oil change as well as put my car on the lift & used a decreasing foam to spray the entire undercarriage as well as up into the engine compartment in order to eliminate as much of the sprayed oil as possible. So the Groupon was $29.95, the quarts of oil I purchased myself $35, proper oil change and decreasing the undercarriage $149. A very expensive lesson on my part but my review isn't about me, it's about Horizon Tire in Ham Lake, MN. These guys lack the necessary knowledge to work on cars.
On my second visit I actually witnessed the guy watching a YouTube video trying to find answers there. This is a good reminder that a simple oil change can turn into a blown engine and these guys had nothing but excuses when I brought it back. Before I left the second time the guy actually said to me, "I'm pretty sure we got it fixed, but if you have any issues with it bring it back and we'll look at it again." Unfortunately the Groupon is almost too good to be true so I'm sure many people are going to find out the hard way that these guys don't know what they're doing. I'm amazed that they haven't had their pants suit off and shut down. I've written a letter to the BBB explaining in detail my experience and he hopes that they will investigate and close this place down. If you've read this and you decide to go with the Groupon and these guys anyway, all it will take is you sitting in that fly infested waiting room for much longer than it should take to change oil to realize that you've made a mistake and it's too late. And you may say "Well, I have a typical car and you have a BMW." ...but keep this in mind if they were truly replacing the oil filter with a new one they would noticed the other parts that come in the box with the filter. Only two things are possible either they did not use the proper oil filter, or they use the proper oil filter and simply discarded the oil ring gaskets from the box. Either way they it's gross negligence. Also when I pick my car up the second time he told me that he took it down the road for 15 minutes to get the engine hot to make sure that it wasn't leaking. I have 3 issues with that: 1) I Can Only Imagine these guys flying down Hwy. 65 in my BMW like the parking attendants driving the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off! 2) After that joyride he assured me that it wasn't leaking only for me to discover that yes, indeed it was leaking and leaking enough to saturate the cardboard. And finally, who in their right mind drives a car wide open for 15 minutes (OR AT ALL) knowing that the engine is heavily leaking oil in order to locate the leak? No mechanic, that's who!
BTW... I'm very skeptical about any of these positive reviews. Even if mine was an isolated case is it worth the risk for an oil change?
I never imagined that a simple oil change would become such a nightmare to the point of writing a Yelp review read more
