Generally, what you need to know is that these guys are honest and know what they are doing. If you go in for an alignment check, they will gladly come to you and tell you that you don't need your alignment done. You also need to know that the people you speak to are mechanics, not salespeople. If there is any downside here, it's that mechanics aren't awesome at PR, so you tend to get abrupt, blunt responses, but working with them long enough, I know that they mean the best by it.
To be more specific about my experiences... In September of 2013, I had a strange sound that I knew was coming from my wheels or tires, so I went to Discount Tire, got new tires, and asked them what the problem was. They suggested it might be alignment, and recommended Network Alignment. When I got to Network Alignment and described the sounds and symptoms, they pretty bluntly said, "That can't be your alignment, but we'll check anyway." It wasn't polite, but it was correct, and in the end, they knew to look into the problem even though I was wrong about the cause.
Being brake, alignment, etc experts, they diagnosed my car with bad bearings by driving it around the block and then confirmed it. They quoted me a price ($750 ish for both front bearings on an '09 Chevy Aveo), including the $150 a piece OEM bearings. I went home to think about it, did some research on them, and did some price checking. I found some bearings for about half the price, and called to ask if we could use non-OEM bearings since I had seen reviews saying they might be okay with this. The manager I spoke to explained to me that usually they would be okay with using after-market parts, but with something critical like a wheel bearing, they wouldn't feel comfortable giving me a cheaper part. Based on reviews saying they do after-market parts, and how he explained it to me, I decided to trust him and got the work done.
After driving the car home, I noticed a quiet metal scraping sound, did some quick research, and decided that some calipers were probably not quite in the right place, which is apparently common with wheel bearing replacement. I made an appointment, they looked at it, agreed with me, fixed it right away, and everything was good.
Now we go to the present, November of 2014. It's just under 14 months after that work is done, and I have a strange sound again. It took me a while to realize it was the same sound, so really the sound started probably closer to August or earlier. After deciding it was worth having them look at it, I called them and made an appointment. They said they would need the receipt from the previous work, but I didn't have it. I went in, they diagnosed it as the same wheel bearing problem, and the person I spoke with worked with me so we could find my receipt in their system. They were able to look it up with the date and my name, but it is definitely better to have the receipt or at least the invoice number. I came in the next day, they did the work, replaced the part, and didn't charge me for it. They did tell me, up-front, that I was definitely outside my warranty. The work had a 90 day warranty, and the part had a 12 month warranty. Both people I spoke with explained that I'm out of warranty, but that "Fixing this is the right thing to do because this part should definitely last longer than a year."
I don't have any new paperwork, and I know that I'm out of warranty completely now, but I'm not too worried about it. Yes, the OEM part they chose to trust over an after-market part wasn't as reliable as they thought it should be, but the logic was sound, and ALL manufacturing processes have a margin of error. I don't blame Network Alignment for that, and I will definitely go back if I need anything else they offer. read more