Muffler Man turned my girlfriend's car into a death trap.
She took her car in for an oil change. It squealed when she touched the brakes, and she wanted that checked out, too.
While she was at work the manager called her with a laundry list of things that needed doing. She had him do it all - she works two jobs and the peace of mind mattered more than the money.
When he was done, he highly recommended that she get an alignment, and although he denied it later, he also told her she needed two new tires. (Which he heavily implied when he spoke to me, too.)
Fast forward a couple days, she takes her car to Wal-Mart and they're unable to change the rear tires because the one on the rear passenger side was so hot the technician burned his hand.
The guy from Wal-Mart guessed it was the caliper, and he told her she was lucky it didn't seize up or catch fire.
My girlfriend had her mother take her car back to Muffler Man while she was working. The manager was there, and he tried to pass it off like it was a problem with the parking brake. He raised the car up, spun the wheel and claimed that because it spun freely, it couldn't have siezed up.
Clearly I or my girlfriend had activated the parking brake and hadn't noticed.
He took the car for a spin, slammed on the brakes several times, and told us to keep an eye on the car for the next two weeks.
No. We took it to a different mechanic. They not only confirmed that it was the caliper, but that the intense heat warped the rotors and destroyed the brake pads Muffler Man replaced one week prior. (Although there had been a problem with the cabling of the parking brake after Muffler Man worked on it, so if there was any truth to that being the problem, it was most likely caused by the mechanic.)
We took the car back to Muffler Man, receipts and broken parts in hand. He muttered, "here they come again" to one of his employees as we approached, and he acted hurt we took it to another mechanic instead of having him do more work on the car.
He said "I'd never double charge you" when looking at the other mechanic's receipt, which meant he didn't read it because the charge he was looking at was what we paid to double check his work.
He had his chance to make it right when her mom came to the store and he blew it. He could have at least offered an apology and a sizable refund, but all we got was griping, heated arguments, buck passing and a measly $166 and change. He put our lives in danger with his shoddy work and wasn't man enough to own up to it.
We're never going to Muffler Man again. read more