Admittedly, I have an old car – a 1995 Buick Riviera with a supercharged engine, which still looks practically new and is by no means a “junker”. It’s still a beautiful car by most people’s standards. It only has around 96, 000 miles on it as a 13 year old car. Granted, I have a different mindset about cars than many. I buy a nice car I really love (in the semi-luxury range) and virtually keep it until it falls apart into a pile of rubble. Then I buy another nice car I love and do the same. I maintain it religiously with regular oil changes and maintenance. But now at 13 years old, I am more judicious about how much I’m willing to reinvest into it, since I may only keep it another year, God willing. Financial consultants will tell you, as well, that buying a new car every 3-5 years is a terrible investment. It’s smarter to buy one and keep it as I do – basically forever – because even with occasional higher repair bills, the costs are still far lower than a forever, perpetual monthly car payment. And that’s my philosophy about it. As a woman, I have far better ways to spend-invest my money than to make non-stop car notes every month for the rest of my life. That being said, I also recognize that many men (and women) would disagree with me and choose the frequent “new car” route, because that is their interest, and a lifestyle choice and they don’t want to hassle with the possibility of car trouble faced with an older car. I choose to keep on with my same car as long as I possibly can, to free up those funds for far better investments, rather than having a monthly car note non-stop for decades straight. That is my personal choice as a customer and I do not appreciate the editorial commentary that “it’s not worth putting the money into it to keep an old car running”. I think that a) it’s environmentally wasteful and irresponsible how Americans have come to so easily toss aside everything and consider all things readily “disposable”; and b) it’s up to me how I choose to manage my money – not them. This mindset also implies I’m not willing to “write a blank check” to someone and authorize them to have total “carte blanche” freedom as to how much to spend to repair my car.

I’m MOST dissatisfied and upset with the entire experience at this place, First Auto Care on Clay Road. I feel they were sleazy and dishonest with me. I had an uneasy feeling from the start that I was about to be had. He was a smooth-talking con artist (in my opinion) who claims to run a Christian business. Against my better judgment and against the advice of others, I decided to give them a try. I even heard horror stories from a co-worker who had had such an extremely bad experience with them that he had come and picked up his unfinished car after they had had it for two months and it still was not fixed and took it somewhere else to finish the work to finally get it done right. Of course I didn’t know about this until I had already towed my car there, though. I want so badly to be able to trust people, so I dared to take a chance on them, hoping my friend’s experience was only a fluke and an unfortunate comedy of errors. Little did I realize that it is just the standard operating procedure for this business. I had received a business post card for this place as a referral from a Texaco Express Lube on Hwy 6 North when I had my oil changed there. That mechanic had told me that my tensioner pulley was looking like it might need to be replaced and that I should do that soon. He said it was about a $45.00 part and didn’t take much time to replace. No big deal.

But before I had gotten around to doing that, my car broke down on my way home from work one evening. So my assumption was that it was probably the tensioner pulley that had broken. What happened was that first my ‘Traction Control Off’ Light on the dash came on. Then immediately after that, it was like there was a drag on the car and it would barely move forward, although the engine was still running. I was able to drive it to the side of the road and called AAA to tow the car to this shop for which I had recently received the card and still had it in my purse. The engine would still run, but it just had difficulty moving forward. From speaking to several mechanics, they indicated there could be as many as a dozen different things that could cause the problem I had experienced. First, it took nearly two days before this shop manager at First Auto Care “Robert” even diagnosed any problem and called me with an estimate. And when he finally called, it was a whopper – a WAY unexpectedly high cost estimate. It’s like he zeroed in on THE most expensive part he could possibly identify to hit me with. He said it was the supercharger that had gone out, which would be a $2400 part, not including labor or any other parts! Not only that, he wanted me to re-do the brakes, and replace the mounts on the transmission and a host of other things. I told him I was not looking to build a new car, part by part; I just wanted it to GO – to find me a rebuilt supercharger, even though I was, and STILL AM, far from convinced that was even the problem.

So he called me back almost immediately with a quote on a re-manufactured supercharger – still $1400.00, not including labor. I made it very clear to him that I really needed to weigh this information and discuss it with some other people, so I could make a good decision whether to authorize him to fix it and that I’d let him know. After careful consideration, I told him to provide me with an exact TOTAL quote to replace the supercharger, including labor and everything. He came back with a quote of $1600 for everything. So then I decided to let them do the rear brakes with rotors and pads and to replace the original tensioner pulley (which they say had not broken) that the first mechanic had advised me to replace, while they had it in there. He came back with a new quote of about $2300 and some odd dollars. So I hesitantly agreed on that amount of money; but I specifically told him in no uncertain terms that this was to be a firm, no wiggle room quote, and there were to be NO SURPRISES. He was not to spend any more than that, without my consent. Yes ma’am, that’s right, he says. So a price was agreed upon and I had rented a car so that I would have transportation to work while it was in the shop, adding to the cost, which I also expressed to him that time was of the essence, since it was costing me money out of my pocket each day I was without my car.

Finally, the main part came in and they had put it on, but they wanted “tomorrow to really check it out to make sure there weren’t any other things that were wrong that were making the supercharger go out” (BESIDES THE FACT THAT THE CAR IS 13 YEARS OLD, YOU MEAN???). And why hadn’t they done that during the first two days they had it??? SO, TWO FULL WEEKS LATER, after a couple of days of him saying “it should be ready tomorrow” and it wasn’t, he finally called and said he had good news and bad news. The good news was that “the car was running great!” The bad news was that they found that they needed to put new spark plug wires on and that they had to replace the fuel regulator to the tune of $400 extra dollars that had NOT BEEN AGREED TO BY ME. He had taken the liberty to authorize those expenditures on my behalf, without my knowledge or consent. I WAS ANGRY. I told him I was NOT happy; I had NOT authorized those charges. So by now, my rental car had cost me $550.00 for two weeks, I had already returned the rent car, PLUS the car repair bill was now up to $2791.07!!! This 13 year old car had now cost $3341.00 to get me out of that nightmare of a garage. He had my car held hostage and I was forced to either accept the car and pay the extra, unauthorized money, OR pay another $80 to tow it elsewhere and pay for another rental car for however long, plus more repair charges, on top of what they had already done! I was screwed! I had to swallow that bitter pill and pay the bill, as furious as I was with those swindlers. He treated it like it was someone else’s time and money and it didn’t matter. Money was no object and he had all the time in the world. TWO WEEKS!

And when I came to pick it up, I told him I wanted to test drive it before I paid for it, so we did. And guess what! It didn’t run well at all. It was still very obviously dragging almost as badly as when I had it towed in! He told me that was because the transmission mounts were putting it in a bind and making it do that, implying I should let them do that work, as well, in order for it to work right. Not only that, NOW the turn indicator is like it’s in slow motion and almost doesn’t work, plus they chipped the color off part of my steering wheel, and I’m scared of my car, because it doesn’t feel right at all. If I have additional work done, I can assure you it will NEVER be done there. He said they had washed the car for me and gave me two coupons for two free oil changes (like that makes up for the royal rip-off I had experienced), but Hell will freeze over before I EVER darken their door again! I will never get sucked into their deceitful grips again! One might say I should expect that with an older car, that there will always be big repair bills. I disagree. There are much less costly ways and places to get that car running again the way it should. I still don’t buy their diagnosis. I think they very deliberately trumped up all sorts of phony problems to jack up my bill as high as they thought I’d go for. For all I know, they could have only replaced a belt and charged me for a supercharger. But once the car is in their possession, how do you get a second, unbiased opinion? I feel cheated and deceived, although I can’t prove anything. All I know is they certainly were not looking out for me or my best interests or trying to help me out in any way. It was all about extracting maximum dollars from me to line their pockets. I intend to sound the warning to everyone I know and other unsuspecting victims to AVOID FIRST AUTO CARE on CLAY ROAD AT ALL COSTS! BEWARE! Tell all your friends.