Sloppy work, from the insurance paperwork through the repair (the repair wasn't done as stated/paid for and the ONLY reason I happened to find out was my partner decided to jack up the car and take a look). And when we came to Nate with questions about why we had been charged certain prices, we found him defensive and opaque (not to mention entirely unempathetic to our situation). Here's how it went down...
I called Nate when my Prius's catalytic converter was stolen based on the rave Yelp reviews. He explained that his shop did a custom welding of several cables to the catalytic converter as a future theft deterrent; he said he would handle all the insurance paperwork. That sounded good to me so I brought my car in.
When I was literally already en route to pick up my repaired car, I got a second call from him saying that although my car was ready, he just realized he hadn't actually received approval from my insurance company to do the repairs! He'd been processing so many insurance claims that he'd mixed up whose approval he'd gotten and whose he hadn't. This seemed very odd to me--this is exactly his job, to track this--but there was nothing I could do at this point. My insurance company ended up approving the claim a day or two later, but it could have been a big mess if they had approved some but not all of the expenses and the repairs had already been completed.
When I brought the car home, my partner (who is a welder and used to work in an auto body shop) wanted to see what they had done to the car, so he jacked it up. According my itemized bill, Nate's Garage had welded washers onto the bolts that attach the exhaust to the exhaust manifold. My partner didn't see any welded washers, and contrary to what Nate had explained to me, there was only two cables, instead of four, beneath the car.
When we called Nate to find out what the deal was, he told us they no longer welded washers and that the description on the bill was outdated. As for the two cables we found, he said that additional cables should have been welded and we would need to bring the car back in. He never apologized or took responsibility for the botched job, except to say that his technician must have forgotten or neglected to add the other cables for some reason. He also showed very little understanding or empathy around the inconvenience for us of having to bring the car back in for something that never should have happened in the first place.
In addition, my partner saw that I had been charged for 2 hours of labor to weld the cable. Being a welder himself, he knew a job like that shouldn't take more than 30 minutes or so. Indeed, when my partner brought the car back for the additional cables, it took the technician exactly 7 minutes to weld them to the car. When my partner asked Nate to explain why we were being charged for 2 hours of labor, Nate more or less refused to answer the question, got pretty tense, and hurried my partner out of the shop, saying that he had other cars to get to.
Unlike many other reviewers here on Yelp, we did not find Nate to be exceptionally honest. He talked condescendingly to my partner, acting as if my partner probably understood very little about cars; he never apologized for the mistakes he made or the inconveniences they caused us; and he was defensive and not straightforward when asked to explain his pricing. It's hard not to conclude that there's good money to be made in replacing stolen catalytic converters, and Nate's Green Garage seems more interested in churning through these jobs than taking conscientious care of cars and customers.
Interestingly, when I look at some of the 1-star reviews of Nate's Green Garage, I see a lot of my concerns echoed. It's a reminder for folks to look at all the reviews, not just the 5-stars. Some businesses are better than others at incentivizing their close comrades to generate glowing reviews, which tends to drown out a more nuanced look. read more
