Didn't plan to leave feedback until what happened this morning. I DIY some maintenances and repairs on my two cars, so I know the technical stuff I am taking about. My Odyssey's alternator was bad and I called them for estimate. They quoted $520+/- for parts and $300+ for labor, total $830, after 10% tax around $910+/-. He didn't quote me any other charges. When picking up, they charged me $976, with an extra $75 core charge for the broken alternator. The alternator was replaced last August at another NAPA AutoCare Center, now it failed again, so Jim's Auto wanted me to keep it as warranty claim proof for NAPA, and agreed to refund me if I return it to them. After I took the car back, and drove it the next day, I found a couple of problems:
When picking up the car from them again, I also returned the bad alternator to them. They wrote me a $75 check for refund. I asked them: shouldn’t the sales tax portion be refunded as well? Without anything hesitation, they said "no, sales tax was not charged on it".
I went home and checked, they did charge sales tax. So today in the morning, I called them, and Jim answered: "just take that from the $100 credit I gave you on the alternator", with a so disgusting tone. At that point I knew there was no point arguing. I don’t want to deal with them again. I already knew the $100 discount there, but they also charged me extra $75 for diagnosis. I am perfectly fine with diagnosis charge, but only if you have included it in your quote. It wasn't! The final charge I got is still about $10+/- inline with the initial quote, so I really don't consider myself received any actual "discount".
Since this was a repair covered by NAPA warrnty, I gave them NAPA's claim #. They said NAPA told them it won't be covered. I called NAPA and NAPA guy said this was very weird, they definitely cover it, and their records don't show any calls from any repair shop. I don't know who I should trust on this. All I know was that now NAPA has immediately agreed to cover it after I submitted invoice to them myself.
Summary:
Their technician used F word on me and said he won't do lousy job like that, well look what he has missed and how I could trust him:
Plus: they feel they are entitled to keep the 10% sales tax in their pocket that should have been refunded to me for the returned core charge! The tone that Jim had when telling me "just take that tax from the $100 credit I gave you" is just simply disgusting! They didn't even hesitate for 1 second telling me sales tax was not charged for core charge!
