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| - I don't always take time to write a review but when I do, it' is usually: for an exceptionally good or poor service. Unfortunately, this time it is the latter. Being from California, I came to Auto Air & Electric by referral from someone I got to know locally. This person has been in the auto field for a long time and recommended AA&E as people with knowledge, experience and integrity. Raving reviews on Yelp provided further assurance that it would be the right place to have my Mazda 626's problem fixed and without hesitation I went to the shop. Upon walking in, I stumbled into Mike at the desk. Mentioning the name of the referring party did not seem to make much of an impression and I proceeded describing my problem. The issue at hand was a non-working A/C system. Most places I had taken the car to for estimates kept looking in the wrong direction and were inclined to think that it was a faulty compressor. A friend who works on cars out of his garage was nice enough to do a great deal of preliminary testing and conclusively ruled it out. Everything was pointing to an electric system. It must be noted that I came to the shop not exactly as a first time novice with an attitude "The car has a problem, please fix it". I had some grasp of the issue, had done some "homework" and just needed to establish the missing link. I felt that with the information I provided AA&E and with their level of expertise it would be a slam dunk. Judging from Mike's lack of interest of my preliminary findings, I understood he was keen at tackling the problem from the bottom up. This approach may have its merits, but I felt, and my feeling was later affirmed, that many of the steps they intentionally or unintentionally took were unnecessary as they had duplicated steps taken by my friend. The repair was started with the basic inspection ($40) which I predicted would not be productive use of time, but Mike insisted it was the right way to do it. 30 min. later he peeked inside to get an approval for the next step up ($125) a more thorough examination. After nearly 5 hours in the shop and $290 lighter (a repair of a short circuited wire bundle, something I had known about, had to be made in the process) I was being told that possibly a relay ($75 special order item) was causing the issue. I was to leave the car in the shop as the part would arrive the next day. Extremely disappointed, to say the least, with the growing costs and no end in sight, I declined and left. Soon after I returned to California and was fortunate to have found a not so fancy shop in one of the industrial areas of LA. Armed with information I provided him, the Spanish speaking mechanic, despite poor command of English quickly got a grasp of the problem and in 45 min. cracked the puzzle. Cherry on the icing was the fact that he charged me only $50 for labor. No parts had to be ordered. None of the "let's do preliminary diagnostic" BS. He tinkered with the car and charged me for producing an actual result rather than an hourly rate while just going through the motions. Based on my overall experience, I feel this rating would be the most appropriate.
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