| rev:text
| - I'll preface this review by saying the people who work here are nice. I'm just not sure they completely know what they're doing. Read on.
A couple months ago, I needed an oil change, so rather than take it to the same old place, I read the reviews here and felt they were better than average to try it out. My car was also making some rattling noises, and I wanted to have that checked out as well. I made an appointment and thus began the adventure.
I specifically had coupons from Meineke themselves to use to get a 20 dollar oil change. Well, for whatever reason, this particular location wasn't taking any of them and had notifications stating such on the walls. I asked the guy working there that day, Mitch, if this was indeed the case. He said it was and would it be a problem. I said no, because I was already there and next in line and didn't feel like going elsewhere. Still, it wound up being 40 bucks and change. Again, I decided to stay, so I knew I was going to eat that part of the cost.
While doing my oil change, Mitch came back with a list of things that needed replacing or worked on, first and foremost a damaged valve cover that was causing oil to slowly leak. He estimated the cost at $225 and change. I didn't have enough to get that fixed that day, but made an appointment to come back a week later after I had a new paycheck in the bank. Mitch also said the rattling noise was coming from under the hood, but didn't specify what exactly, and went right into the spiel about the valve cover needing replacing after mentioning this, so I misunderstood that this was causing the weird sound.
The next week, I came back. They had the wrong part for my car. Instead of having a four cylinder engine valve cover, they had a six. So one of the guys had to go to their warehouse and pick up the correct part. During waiting for this to happen, the rest of the crew was extremely nice and apologized up and down, offered to take me somewhere if I needed to be somewhere, and even invited me to have lunch with them as it was taking longer than expected. Again, super nice people and I was impressed with their candor. In the end, they got the correct part, put it on, I paid my money and went home.
I noticed my car was still rattling when I pulled into my parking spot back home. I called and left a message saying the rattling only occurred between 600-800 RPM or while idling when waiting at a stop light and could Mitch or whomever at the store please get back in touch with me. A week went by and no call back. I chalked it up to just being part of the exhaust possibly being a little loose, because that's what it sounded like. No biggie. The car was driving fine and the sound was just mildly annoying.
A short few weeks later, I took my car in to my regular guys over at Pep Boys on Steubenville Pike (see review for them) to get a couple tires put on. After having done so, I was leaving the parking lot and my car just died. Got a jump and it died again. I discovered that the rattling sound was the alternator. It was just old and needed replacing. So be it. They did the work and it ran great afterward. I only wish the guys at Meineke could have pointed that out at the time I was originally there. I was lucky the car died in the Pep Boys lot and not out on the interstate. But I digress.
A week or so after that, I took my car back to Pep Boys to have its yearly inspection. I expected it to need some new brakes, which it did, along with a tie rod. No biggie. But then I was informed that lo and behold, the valve cover needed replacing because the oil was leaking and was down a full two quarts. My response was "What? I just had that done a few weeks ago!"
Now, at this juncture I could have dragged my car back to Meineke and had them fix it again. Maybe I should have, but then I came to the conclusion that I would just have Pep Boys do it, because they always get it done right the first time, give me a good discount, and I knew it wouldn't be botched, Bob quoted me an estimate of $196, which is a good 30 bucks cheaper than what I paid Meineke. So I had the valve cover replaced yesterday with no problems at all. Bob said he needed to replace the spark plug wires, too because they had become wet from the oil, but worked it out to be the same price. In fact, it was three dollars less.
The bottom line is you can get oil changes for half the price basically anywhere else, and mechanics who know what they're doing elsewhere, too. I'm not sure why the valve cover job was botched here, but as I said, I wasn't going to let them take another crack at it. Everyone here may be super nice, but super nice doesn't equal super service. I suggest you shop around before taking your car here to get work done on it, minor or major.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)