Complaint Review: Auto Expressions - Rochester New York

"Place is run like a Mc Donalds". By that I mean quantity and not quality. They seem to want to book as many people as possible and run the cars through quickly with little concern of the effect running a quick job has on the outcome of the install. I went to Auto Expressions to have a car starter installed for my wife for Christmas and left the car overnight after driving around the area for about 2hrs and coming back to find it hadn't been even pulled in yet. It was a Saturday and I was told that they usually like the cars to be left those days if possible and picked up by end of buisiness day. Well there was nothing to do in that town so I told them they could keep it there overnight and I would pick it up the following day. The following day we had a car starter and we were happy and drove home. A few weeks later the steering wheel column cover falls off on my wife while driving and we notice the clips on the bottom cover, for the top cover, are broken and the plastic posts, where they used to be, are discolored (lighter) from stress. Upon bringing it into the shop I was told it would be taken care of, without being told what would be done. So I spoke to the cashier and told him I did not want the cover glued on. This is where I suppose I should have been more specific and told them I wanted the car in the condition it was in when I brought it to them. The representative there told me that in his 40yrs of experience that this happens all the time because the cars are cold from the outside weather and that the fix was to adhere the top to the bottom but do it in a manner so that if it needed to be worked on again it would come apart without much of a problem. I told him I wanted a second opinion and would call someone I trusted. I was told then by the rep. that while I do that he's going to do what his 40yrs of experience tells him is the best thing to do for my car and "take care of it for me". By that point I was so upset and confused that I said ok and walked out to get my second opinion. After clearing my head with my second opinion I walked back in the store as the rep. was leaving to get an adhesive that he was familiar working with. Apparently the store wasn't stocked with the proper band-aid fix column cover glue. I asked the guy at the counter two things: First, why don't you guys run the heater in the car while they're in the garage so the parts don't break while you're working on them? To which I was told that customers often don't want to wait that long for them to heat the cars. Second, if there was any work done to my car yet. The guy at the counter replied that something was tried but wasn't working. I told him I'd take my car and leave and did just that. Finding a sticky black putty-like substance on the bottom column cover over the broken cover clips. When I called back to the company to ask for their insurance to file a damage claim I was advised that THEY DON"T HAVE INSURACE and that they run under a D.B.A. of (insert owner's name). The rep./owner on the phone then asked why I left and I told him I left because after I told him I did not want it glued he proceeded to go in the garage to my car to glue it. He said at that point that I never told him what I wanted exactly. I told him I wanted it back in the condition it was when I brought it in, not glued. He reminded me that I never told him that and offered me JUNK YARD PARTS. I told him to forget about it since I had already called Honda and got a quote for NEW PARTS ($11 for the top, $25 for the bottom) and would fix it myself. Not a pleasant experience over $36 in parts that they broke. Won't be going there again...

Andrew

Hamlin, New York

U.S.A.