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| - For years my friend has been telling me to go to Sun Auto because they have a high level of customer service and are "straight shooters". So when I knew I needed a certain replacement part on my car, I took it to them.
On the positive side, they were extremely courteous and professional, and likely do a good job.
But when they came back with the quote, they said it would be over $700. I'm no mechanic, but that sounded high. I looked at the breakdown, and they wanted almost $500 for the part alone. So I took a few minutes to call around.
My dealer (the biggest scammer in the world) only wanted $200 for the part. AutoZone had one in stock for $120. A little cursory checking online showed me that if I wanted to order from Amazon, it would end up being less than $60!!
So even if they were selling me the exact OEM part from my original vehicle, they were marking up the part more than 100% (I'm purposefully not mentioning the part name so they don't come back with some double-speak comment).
I asked if they could put on the AutoZone part for me instead. They said yes, but that the cost of the labor would increase and there would be no guarantee on the work. I said no thanks, explained I needed to save some money, showed him the price of the part online...and the man threw my key back at me and the nice customer service and smiles suddenly came to an abrupt halt.
I looked up a top rated independent mechanic here on Yelp. He put the part on for $75 and a 1 year guarantee.
If you're keeping score at home, that's $195 I ended up paying vs. $700. If I had wanted to wait for the part to arrive in the mail, it would have been even less than that. So just do yourself a favor, if you take your car here and the quote seems high, sit down with your smart phone for a couple minutes and check around for the price of the part. If your experience was anything like mine, you might save yourself a nice chunk of change.
In the end, I blame myself. The friend that had been recommending this place to me is wealthy and just wants his car fixed quickly, whatever the cost is. If this is all you care about, I'm sure Sun Auto is a fine place.
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