I had my 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe towed here the Sunday after July 4th. My problems began on July 4th,…read morebut traveling out of state over the holiday weekend prohibited me from getting my vehicle looked at sooner. Fortunately my breakdown happened less than 50 miles from home.
Despite not having had an appointment, my car was checked-out the first thing the next day, on Monday morning. Awesome. Jay (service advisor) called to tell me how much the shop charges per hour before the mechanic ran a diagnostic test on my vehicle: $115/hr., but I was fine with that. At that point what was I going to do? Find another mechanic? No. I live an hour away from Brian Bemis.
Jay called throughout the week to update me on what was going on, which I appreciated. A couple of small repairs (ultimately no major problems) turned into about 6 fixes, so the bill added up quickly.
I picked my car up on Friday, July 11th and it's been running just fine since the repairs. I was a little bummed it took 5 business days to fix only minor issues, but this was primarily due to the fact that they don't have all car parts in-stock (at least not mine).
There were about half a dozen things to be repaired and my total bill after tax was about $1800. Yes, going to a dealer is expensive, but they also work with my specific car day in and day out; Jay even told me about an ongoing recall (ongoing since 2006!) with the subframe of my car. No other mechanic had ever mentioned this to me, but any non-Hyundai certified mechanic presumably wouldn't have know about this.
My car is only worth $2500, so I likely won't continue to dump money into repairs. However, this dealership's body shop is fantastic, top-notch and professional. I have zero complaints.
They even vacuumed out and washed my car. My tires are still shiny almost 2 weeks later. A little 'thank-you' for the $1800 worth of business? Probably.
