Precision Tune (read all of this)
Location:
5831 Buckeystown Pike, Suite H
Frederick, MD 21704
This shop used to be a great place
to bring a car. Not anymore.
It's difficult to pinpoint when they went over to the
dark side, but these days they epitomize the bad reputations often related to
the auto mechanic industry. The people who work there are nice...at
first...but after a short while greed seems to have taken priority over honesty
and decent customer service. Their technique is a simple one, at least it
was in our case. We'd been badly ripped off at another shop, so we gave
Precision Tune a try. They listened to our tale, and then gave us a nice
price on some service work we needed to have done. After getting
beaten up by the first shop I suppose we were easy targets.
But once our relationship was established, sure enough;
they began really jerking us around.
We took our 1999 Lexus into their shop on a Tuesday
because it was bogging down. The counter salesman said that because we
were established customers who brought all our cars to them we wouldn't be
charged for the diagnostic time. Hey! That's $75 an hour, so who wouldn't
be happy to hear that? They didn't get to our car that day, but that was
all right. We didn't really need it until Friday.
Thursday came and went with no word from them, so on
Thursday evening we called to ask what was going on. They still hadn't
looked at it.
On Friday we were told that we were their "top
priority." Okay, that wasn't at all what we wanted to hear, but we
now had no choice, and the weekend was upon us. We absolutely had to have
it early Monday morning for business reasons, and we let them know. They
said that it wouldn't be a problem.
On Monday we were once again told that we would not
have our car. The reason was questionable, and we were beginning to get a
little pissed off.
Tuesday (it had now been a week) we received a call
that the mechanic was back from vacation, and that he was looking at our car as
the counterperson was speaking.
Vacation?!
On Wednesday we received a call that our car was ready
to be picked up. There was a bad air sensor causing the problem. The
mechanic explained that he didn't replace it because he knew we were running on
a budget, so he switched it with another sensor saying that it would last for a
while. In other words, no repair had even been done.
When we arrived expecting to pay perhaps $75 for labor
that probably took less than an hour, we were handed a bill for over $519.
"For what", I asked?! "You
didn't even fix anything!"
The sales counterperson said, "There was a
lot of diagnostics time. You can't expect us to just eat that, can
you?"
I could if I'd been told the truth.
We had nothing in writing, and our car was locked
in their garage, so we were screwed. We had to borrow money from a friend
just so we could get our still-broken car back from these jerks, and still faced
getting it repaired.
Wait! It gets even better!
We neglected to tell our teenaged daughter all of
this, so she thought they were still honest when she took her car to them to
have the exhaust system repaired. They quoted her a price of $1,500 to
replace it from end to end. She was crushed! She now had to figure
out how to buy herself a new vehicle, but a friend told her to take it to
another local shop. This second shop did the work for $150 by welding on a
small cap, which was all the car needed.
In my opinion, Precision Tune is not
just a bad shop. They've lied to us, and as far as I'm concerned, they
stole money we needed for food. They are a classic example of a rip off
mechanic shop, and should be avoided at all costs. If you need repair work
done, go next door to Churchill Auto Care. Churchill has the best service
and prices we've found, and the owner is as honest as the day is long!
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