TL;DR: Luke's is great. Honest and fair value, and saved me a ton of money. They have my highest possible recommendation.
Buckle in because this is a long story.
I had a serious problem with my AC: it blasted hot air when the car was in motion. My regular mechanic refilled the freon, tried to fix it, and found it was over his head. No charge for the labor, since he couldn't fix it, but $70 for the freon. He recommended I try the Toyota dealership.
I went to the dealership, paid for the inspection, $300, which goes towards any work done. Was told I had two problems with the AC: the freon was over-filled, and the motherboard was bad. They guessed that the overfilled freon was the core problem, and the motherboard was causing a minor, unrelated issue. I expressed doubt, because the freon had just been refilled, and the problem had started before refilling it. The rep insisted that this was the most likely explanation, and that they had to refill the freon anyway. $350 for freon, of which $300 was already covered by the exam fee. Meanwhile $1.5k for the motherboard, which they didn't recommend replacing. So I pay for the freon, my rep says the problem's fixed. I drive away and as I do so I am blasted with 105 F air; the problem was not fixed at all, the freon was a red herring.
I didn't want to spend $1.5k with a team that had already made one bad call so I decided to get a second opinion and chose Luke's based on their Yelp reviews. Luke's did an exam, $200 or $250, found that the freon was again overfilled, and thought the problem was with the HVAC actuator and quoted 2.3k. Ouch! (It's a lot of labor as they need to take out the entire dashboard.)
I talked to both Luke's and the Toyota guys about their different opinions. Luke's was able to give me the error codes from their exam, while Toyota hadn't retained any paperwork at all. Moreover Luke's was willing to do a second exam, for free, to make sure they were right, while Toyota was not. Toyota agreed that if the actuator needed to be replaced, 2.3k was reasonable.
I went back to Luke's for the second exam. They stood by their conclusions. So I bit the bullet and asked them to replace the actuator. They gave me a free car to drive while mine was in the shop. Turned out I didn't need it for long: they were able to replace the actuator quickly by going through a vent, rather than taking out the whole dash. This knocked about $1k off the job in labor. And when I got back in the car, lo and behold, it was fixed!
I cannot overemphasis my elation. Luke's did better than the dealership, by a lot. They were accurate while the dealership was incorrect. They were scrupulous and offered a second exam for free. They figured out a way to save me money. And best of all they actually did the job. Highest possible recommendation. read more