Until about a year ago, I was a long-time (over 10 years!) and satisfied customer of Unique Auto Center, taking my 1997 Mustang GT convertible for regular maintenance and the occasional mechanical repair. Then I started having a persistent electrical problem: my battery would die for no apparent reason. When this continued after replacing the older (but still under warranty) battery with a new one from AAA (~$100), I took the car into Unique.
Over the next few months, Unique tested and tested, and replaced a few small things here and there (e.g., the battery terminals, etc.), charging me for the work each time (~$50). The problem persisted. I even had AAA replace the second battery with a third one under their warranty, but the problem continued.
Then the bass range of my audio system went out.
People familiar with Unique will know that one half of the office is dedicated to auto engine and other mechanical repair, while the other half is dedicated to auto audio repair. So I thought, Perfect!, Unique will be the place to handle this problem, too.
And as it turned out, the two problems -- a dying battery and audio with no bass -- were related. As Unique eventually discovered, the soft top of the convertible had leaked near the rear window and into the well behind the back seat, shorting out the two audio bass amplifiers that Ford so foolishly engineered to be located there. One or both of the amplifiers first shorted enough to drain the battery, and finally enough to fail completely, knocking out the bass.
Unique, who should have been especially qualified to identify and fix the two problems (well, really only ONE problem, right?) took many, many months to do so. But, hey, that sort of thing can happen, especially with electrical problems, right? So that's NOT the reason I can give Unique only one star; that's just the background.
Here's why Unique deserves only one star: Ron, Unique's owner, claims to be an auto audio expert, and he performed all of the audio work himself. But first he said that he couldn't find replacement amplifiers at a reasonable price. I quickly found them available online from quite a few salvage companies, and had a pair (~$100) delivered to me, which I took to Ron. He couldn't get them to work, and told me that they were both bad, so I returned them to the salvage company and had another pair sent to me, which again I took to Ron, and again he said that they were defective. I kept those.
By this point, I was headed out of town for a week, so Ron and I made a deal: he would replace the stock amplifiers and tuner components (but not the stock speakers) with new, non-stock models comparable in performance to the stock system, and he wouldn't charge me more than $800 (I think that was the number) doing so. Further, he assured me that he would complete the job while I was gone and leave the Mustang in my driveway -- I live less than two miles away from Unique -- so that it would be there the following Saturday night when I returned.
When I returned home on Saturday night, there was no car and Unique was closed. So, after staying in all Saturday night, on Sunday morning (when Unique was also closed), I took a cab (~$20) to rent a car (~$80) to get around. On Monday, I picked up the Mustang, which now had a new receiver in the dash that looked good (but a bit out of place in the Mustang) but sounded HORRIBLE. The new components provided no bass whatsoever, sounding even worse than with the stock blown amplifiers. And Ron had replaced the stock speakers without my permission.
When I approached Ron with these issues, he refused to make good on the bottom line of our deal: that he would provide a system comparable in performance to the working stock system for our agreed price. Rather than fight any longer, I agreed with Ron that he would return the system to its pre-repair, blown amplifier state. But Ron would refund only $150 of the $800 that he had charged me.
I now had about $1,000 into this situation, and nothing was yet fixed.
Eventually, I finally did get everything fixed (for about $200 at American Upholstery; see my review there), and here's what else I learned in the process: (1) Ron had ripped out the stock speaker wiring, leaving in place wiring that was unusable with the stock equipment; (2) when Ron removed the stock speakers, he destroyed the cushioning/damping materials around each that, when absent, allow the speakers to rattle in the doors; and (3) not only did both of the salvage/replacement amplifiers work just fine, but one of the ORIGINAL amplifiers worked just fine, too (as, all along, only one of the two stock amplifiers was shorted out and blown).
I feel sorry for José (the mechanical repair shop manager) and his employees, since they're good guys and I used to enjoy taking my car there. But as long as Ron owns Unique, I can't go back. And I hope that no one else does, either. read more
