I have a 1990 VW Jetta GL.
One day, this past August, my car would not start. AAA came and checked it out. The battery was fine since I had just gotten it recently from Metric Systems in Cambridge, my former mechanic. They thought it was the starter. But I had also just gotten it installed at Metric recently.
The car was towed to Metric. After the car was checked out, Steve, the garage owner, said that the starter was fine but gas had been sprayed into cylinder 2 & 4 and the engine was "hydraulically seized." He removed the gas from the cylinders but the car still did not start up. He sounded grave and said I may loose my car but he would continue to check it out, step by step. Having dealt with him in the past, I knew that a huge bill was in the pipeline. I decided to have the car towed to another garage. Steve still charged me $90.00 for "diagnosing" the engine, according to the bill he gave me (this $90 did not included $6109.20 I had spent since I started taking the car there in 2009, one time in 2003 and twice in 2003).
I took my car to West Cork Auto in Jamaica Plain. I had heard that they were good with VWs. There, I met the owner, a nice Irishman, Patrick Lombard. He said that he did not need to know what the diagnosis at Metric was. He would examine the car and make his own observations. To make a long story short, the car needed an electronic control unit, new ground strap, a new coolant pipe from water pump to engine, a new fuel rail, and an oil change. He was kind enough to let the car sit in his garage for almost 3 months as I searched for the fuel rail and ECU on the Internet (this made it much cheaper for me). His bill was very reasonable, probaly half or more of what Metric would have charged.
West Cork only has two workers: Patrick and a colleage. Put another way: it's a more nimble garage and flexible for my needs. What's more, you can actually talk to Patrick and he'll listen. With Steve, the owner of Metric, I always felt uncomfortable trying to bring in my view for he was always certain about everything. For instance, users on the website I go to for advice, http://vwvortex.com, had accurately predicted what was wrong with my car (they had insisted that I needed a new ECU). But in the past when I would mention their views to Steve he clearly did not want to listen. He once told me, "Tell them not leave their day jobs." (By the way, I dropped by Steve's garage a few days ago, as I was driving by. He seemed surprised to see that my car was fixed and running. I wanted to explain to him how things went but, as usual, he didn't seem like he really wanted to listen. He said he was busy, took down my phone number and said he will call me.)
It's a rough world out there. After spending $6109.20 with my former mechanic when my moment of greatest need arrived I had to go to a different garage to get the car help that I needed. I'm a big believer in sites such as Yelp. It is one tool that the customer has since few of us really know what a mechanic is doing to one's car. We deal mostly on trust. I'm now trying to educate myself as much as possible.
One thing I know is this: For a Kenyan immigrant like me, with an old car, a small garage like West Cork, is the way to go. The challenge is trying to find the right balance between a trustworthy mechanic and reasonable labor costs. Not easy. read more
