As a young woman, mechanics often assume that I don't k now anything about cars. I might not know a lot, but I know a screwjob when I see one.
I bought a used car in a private sale about 3 months ago, and soon recognized a loud droning noise coming from the left front tire. I did my research and found out it was a bad wheel bearing, but didn't have the money or the time off from work to have it fixed. It soon got so bad that I finally bit the bullet and called the mechanic closest to my house: Dobbs. They charged me $30 just TO LOOK AT IT and tell me what was wrong. They then told me that the wheel bearing had melted to axle boot, meaning they had to replace the entire axle. When I asked why they couldn't just replace the boot instead of the entire thing, they said they *could* do that, but replacing the whole thing would be cheaper. How cheap was "cheap?" $630! I said, "Um, no thanks." and left.
I then drove 30 miles away to a shop I'd had great luck with before. They said NOTHING about a melted bearing or replacing the axle. Instead, they got my car in right away, diagnosed the problem for FREE and only charged me $200 to replace the bearings.
I'm never going to Dobbs again, and you shouldn't either!

I give them a one star rating. If you can't trust them it does not matter how good they are. I believe they may have an unspoken corporate policy of using scare tactics first then use intimidation to jackup prices on repairs. I saw this on 60 minutes and it fit what happened to me. This is my story about Dobbs on big bend and sulpher springs road. On 3-5-09 at 2:35 pm i carried my old work car in to try and locate what was causing the front drivers side axle to run off the transaxle shaft. I had worked on this car the sunday before and let my 16 year old son install a new axle, lower control arm and new tension strut bushings. In the process he forgot to install a washer behind the tension strut to control arm bushing. When the brakes were applied hard it would let the tension strut bushing at the lower control arm slide in and out of the control arm, this would cause the wheel assembly to flex enough to slide the axle out to the edge of the transaxle shaft and make a grinding noise. To repair this car all that was required was the installation of the washer on the tension strut to control arm . Brian, the shop forman carried me to the raised car and showed me the missing washer, which, as soon as i saw it i new this was the only trouble the car had. Then in a very rude tone, he informed me that the axle was the wrong one (too short) . I new this was not true. Then he informed me that the passengers side axle was too short, I guess they saw where I had replaced it two weeks before. The passengers side axle is/was fine, wouldn't let them touch it. As I stood there looking at the problem and wondering, is this guy trying to shist me about short axles when it was obvious that the missing washer was all the problem, he broke into a tyraid about the car was unsafe to drive and he wouldn't let me drive it. I did not respond to him, then out of the blue he was saying something about, he didn't know what kinda problem I had with my parts supplier and if i thought i could bring my own parts in ( i had no parts nor had I mentioned anything like that) and he put them on, then this conversation was over. All of this sounded to me like he thinks he can hold peoples cars and they can walk home. Where all this B.S. came from I do not know, unless it is like the show I saw on 60 minutes. Usually I would not have submitted to this kind of threatening tone and pressure selling and would have told him to kiss my ars and lower my car, but I needed the car fixed fast.. I let him order a new axle, when it came in we layed it beside the one that they took out and both were the same length axles. Nothing wrong with the old (4 day old) axle. I let him install the new axle. Only then did he put a washer on the tension strut which was the only problem the car had. I hate to think this was a deliberate action to jack the price up on a small repair but the more I think about it that is the only explanation I can come up with. I would not use this Dobbs auto and tire.