We had been happy with their service for decades. Last week we dropped off our car and found them considerably busier than usual, and I was glad they had become more successful.
Despite only needing a tire patched/plugged or replaced, they couldn't look at our car for two days and we mentioned possibly having the work done another time as we had plans for the weekend and following week. We were pleasantly surprised then, to get a call that they were done. We paid over the phone; they were to leave the car locked with the keys under the mat for us to pickup after hours with our second key (as we had done many times.) When we arrived Saturday afternoon, the car was nowhere to be found. We finally spotted it inside a closed work bay with one window rolled down and thought maybe there had been a mistake. Perhaps they thought it was another customer's car - even though this is a rather unique vehicle. Their policy, unless it has changed, was only to lock up cars that still required payment. We were also going out-of-town Monday morning and needed the car that weekend so we sent emails, called, & left a note in the dropbox - PLEASE - call us as soon as someone see this so we can get our car before our departure.
There was no word over the weekend (which is ok, I get it - they were closed) but would not answer the phone until well after they opened. Mike said he was too busy to talk to me, took my name and said they would "check on it" and someone called me back over two hours later. I got to the phone just as it stopped ringing and called back immediately. It was not Mike, as usual - but someone who I believe said his name was Ahmed. When I explained that I had literally just missed a call only seconds earlier, he replied "Oh, you" and it seemed clear he was quite annoyed. He said they had left it out the night prior but when we never showed up they brought it back in. That's not even possible - if they had locked the keys in the car, they would never have had the keys to then take it back into the bay!
I said, okay - I can accept that is your version of events that you think is accurate but that is not mine and now we had a problem with a drastic impact on our trip. (We needed to talk about what to do now but our options were limited because, before even calling back, they had gone ahead now and left it out with the keys locked inside!)
It's concerning to me that despite many attempts to reach them (email, phone, physical notes slid in the door) we can't just briefly speak to someone but instead are still waiting until almost noon on Monday (when they opened at 7:30 AM). I get that they are busy but when someone has said this is important (multiple times!) one would think they could take a few minutes before doing anything else with the car. He was insistent I made a mistake and didn't come when I told them - if you do want to give them the benefit of the doubt on their understanding of events, why did they not call us and ask if they want it locked up for the weekend (assuming they could somehow retrieve a key from a locked car?) At this point he scoffed and then burst out in laughter while saying something to the extent of "yeah, right ma'am whatever you say" - although that could be off as it was hard to hear the exact words through his chuckles.
If they simply had called us before they went and locked the keys in the car and then just said oops, sorry... and that would have been the end of it and we could have figured out a plan. Instead, knowing it was out there and that they shared they had had cars stolen from the lot overnight, we cut our trip short. Three days later we returned to find the receipt in the car and discovered they had also charged us considerably more than the amount we were told and done work we never even mentioned (transmission analysis, two inspections, etc.) The emissions inspection was particularly alarming; this car doesn't require emissions for registration so we never would have possibly asked for that to be done and they had done this once before (5 years earlier) and we had a long discussion about it then.
I called and tried to talk to them and Ahmed (?) said he could not hear me. No one else has told me that with the same phone and my same location but I borrowed a phone from someone else and called back. This time Mike answered and proposed a solution: they add a note to the system that the car doesn't need emissions inspections so it doesn't happen a third time. That's not enough, in my opinion. They shouldn't be doing work they aren't asked to do and we shouldn't be paying for it so all this ended with me contacting my credit card company and initiating a charge back. Decades of feeling like they were family ending like this... so unfortunate! read more
