I needed a lot of work done on my car after a collision that occurred just minutes from the Tulley Collision center. I immediately had the car towed there for repairs since they did a wonderful job on two prior collision repairs my family needed years ago. Unfortunately, this recent experience was far from wonderful.
The repairs were in the neighborhood of $15 to $20k, so I expected it would take a good 4 to 6 weeks. Eight weeks later, I finally got my car back and I was more frazzled from the repair process than from the accident itself. My chief complaint with the Tulley Collision Center is their front office. It may not be their doing. It could be how they were instructed to operate, but they go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible to talk to anyone there. Their canned line is "everyone is in a status meeting, so we can keep our customers up to date on the status of their car". This is their response no matter what time of day you call. Despite all these status meetings, no one seems to ever know the status of your car. Only one person holds the key to that information and that person is always out in the shop and unreachable. Michelle at the reception desk can not page, call or walk over to the glass window to wave down this person. So you are stuck leaving a message and hoping they will call back which sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. When I complained about this they let me know how they go above and beyond by having a "check vehicle" webpage for customers to keep tabs on their car. They sent us the link to this webpage at the five and a half week mark into the repair process and from that point to delivery, no updates were made to it. A pretty useless tool. If I were them, I'd have been too embarrassed to have even mentioned this tool.
My second major complaint about this shop is their policy of not releasing your car until insurance has paid up. The work on my car was completed by week 7, but they held my car hostage for an eighth week waiting until they felt comfortable enough with the insurance paperwork. Mind you, insurance had been paying all along. They paid their initial bill, they paid the first supplemental bill and they were just left with processing the final supplemental bill. I can't imagine any other business operating this way. If I went to a doctor and they agreed to take my insurance, I can't imagine them withholding info on a biopsy test until they received payment from the insurance company. If insurance doesn't pay, the customer is liable. You send the customer a bill. If the customer doesn't pay, you turn them over to a collection agency, but you don't hold their car as collateral for an indefinite period of time. I can't imagine this is legal. When talking to the Tulley courtesy driver on my way in to pick up my car, he assured me that this was routine and that they had cars still in the shop from January of this year for that very reason (11 months). Scary, to say the least. I personally don't think this driver knew what he was talking about, but still he represents Tulley and this is the story he passed to me.
My third major complaint was with Rick the manager assuring me the car would be identical to how it was before the accident. To me, that is an impossible claim to make. After such a hard impact where airbags were deployed, there will be problems that won't show up until months or maybe years later because no one can possibly anticipate every issue. I pushed back on his claim, but he was adamant that the car was perfect. I drive the car home (a 50 minute ride) and find my hands are freezing even though I've jacked the heat up to 85 degrees. They never checked the auto climate controls.
I've given them two stars instead of one because my car does run and the outside looks like it was never in a crash (though they left a scratch on my steering wheel which will forever remind me of this ordeal). I used to recommend this shop to friends whose cars needed body work. I can no longer recommend the Tulley Collision center. If they actually get their "check vehicle" website off the ground and leave the bill collecting to collection agencies instead of seizing your car for collateral they may have a future, but they're not there yet. read more