I have no idea what happened to the other one-star review for this place, but please, please do not do what my parents and I did: take these people at their word. Make sure everything that they promised to do for your car is documented in writing. Ask for copies of all the forms they give you. After you get your car back, take your car to a trusted mechanic near your home and have them do a routine check that everything is where it should be. Do all of that and I hope to God you do not get stranded several hundred miles from home, because your car won't stop, your battery is toasted, you have no jump cables, there is no reception, and strangers aren't always kind enough to stop.
This is what happened: we got into a collision on Harlem River Drive, near 179th Street in NYC. Our poor smashed-up car gets towed all the way to the south side of Williamsburg. In Brooklyn. How does that happen? The Arterial Tow Program of the NYPD must have struck some sort of partnership with Knights, because I'm sure there were a billion other collision shops in Manhattan that we could have gone to.
I won't talk about the fact that everyone at the scene, from the paramedics to the hospital employees to the guy who did the towing, that we could go pick up our car on a Sunday. Never mind that the fender had been knocked off, the air bags had been deployed, and the windshield was cracked. Never mind that your website explicitly advertises "24/7 towing and storage." Doesn't that imply that someone will be there to help us out when we arrive at the shittiest part of Brooklyn? Oh there was someone there. Some guy embodying the worst stereotypes of mechanics who couldn't give less of a rat's ass that, after going through something awful, we had trekked all the way out to Brooklyn. Oh, by the way, the Arterial Tow Program's dispatcher and I had a nice discussion, and by nice, I mean she was rude ("This is a police dispatcher, so no, I can't tell you the name of a cab company"), and I filed a complaint against the department right then and there.
I will talk about this set of facts, and you can draw your own conclusions: before our crash, we had a battery installed that came directly from Toyota's manufacturer. After you "fixed" our car, my dad opened the hood and found a different battery, with corrosion around the positive and negative ports. One of your mechanics looked my dad straight in the eye, and said, "Yeah we put in a brand new battery." Listen, buddy, I'm no car expert, but a new battery should not have corrosion. Fast forward to two weeks later. Our car got stuck in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Just would not start, despite using jump cables and a damn Hummer. So our car gets towed this time to another mechanic, who says the "brand-new" battery is five years old, from Sears, and would have given out any day now. You know what? Here's the conclusion: you took out our old battery, put in a shitty one, told us it was new, "forgot" to put it on the itemized list because you're oh so generous, and took our money and smiled.
I wanted to let you know that the whole time we were there, we felt as though we were completely at the mercy of your business. That is not how it should be. There was absolutely no transparency at how your specialist arrived at the final figure, and there were no discussions with us as to exactly what repairs were required. The upstairs towing department and the downstairs collision shop have no communication with each other. We were told we could retrieve our EZ-Pass from our car by a mechanic, and was then subsequently yelled at by the lady in charge of towing, because apparently, you need a driver's license, the car's registration, the insurance proof, and a notarized form from the car's owner (that would be my mom) giving express written authorization for, uh, my mom to go get something from our busted car. The lady in charge of towing seemed to make it her life's mission to make everything as difficult as possible. Listen, I wasn't the one who shot your puppy with an assault rifle, so don't you ever use that tone with me.
I wanted to let you know that I am pissed. That after going through a car accident, my interactions with you made me wish I was still experiencing that accident. read more