This company is not one that will charge you reasonably. I would at the very least be wary and ask for a second opinion.
This whole situation has taught me a lesson I hadn’t known before- be careful of mechanics because they have the ability to take advantage of you. This is one place to be cautious of.
To start, I was in a little bit of a time crunch because I had a trip planned but noticed an issue with my car starting. My friend was busy this week but told me that it’s easy to test out what the issue was at autozone for free. I was busy with work and unable to find time to get it there and test it, so I called a few spots and nobody was available. Finally silver lake had an opening. I made an appointment. When I got there to drop my car off, they informed me that it would cost 160-320$ just for diagnostics. Because I was in a bit of a desperate spot, I agreed. A few people warned me that they may be trying to scam.
The next day I get a call that starts off with telling me there is 3700 dollars of work. He listed off the issues and the first thing he said was my oil needed changing and my cabin filter needed changing. I had both done for a little over 100$ just over a week ago. I told him that it had been done and he stated that it would take the price down to 3450. That means it would be 250$ for an oil change and a cabin filter change which is more than double what I had paid for it before. That in and of itself is way too much, but the fact that they had stated these as issues when I just had it changed a week ago was a huge red flag.
When I asked how much it would be just to get the starter fixed, they said that alone would be 1100$. We had done independent research on the parts needed hoping we could find time to get it done and found the starter for 130$. It takes 3 hours max to change a starter. Even if their starter was a little more high end, that would mean their labor cost is somewhere around 250-300$/hr.
I am grateful I was warned to be wary of people scamming and I hope someone can benefit from this information with this same knowledge.
Addendum: I received a call from the manager who told me that he was sorry for some miscommunication and said he would like to rectify it by changing my starter for a heavy discount at the cost of 500$, 600$ less than what they had estimated. He told me the part was 330$, which was marked up a little, but from how much he didn’t know. I took it in and they were done in about an hour. The 500$ ended up being a reasonable price given the part and the cost of labor for how long it took them.
