Update at bottom My experience is that it seems like an honest and reputable shop. Their labor cost is 148 per hour, but they undercharged me for time spent, so it was in effect lower than that. They would only put in a manufacturer-made alternator, explaining they want to trust the part. It was about 300 more expensive than a Duralast part from AutoZone, but that's fair and reasonable, and they were transparent about it. Frank and my mechanic who was talking about his old GTI were both friendly and happy to share lots of info. They stuck with their estimate though they let me know it took some hours extra. Positive experience and good shop. They did the promised work at the price I agreed to, and I definitely get the impression they're running an honest shop. 5 stars deserved. Edit: One month after repair the alternator has died again. Changing review to 1 star until a good resolution is reached. The $1394 fix they presented as essentially the only fix led to it breaking a month later from the same oil leak. For them to profit 1000 off of that wouldn't be cool. I suspect that spraying electronics cleaner on the alternator (an option I wasn't told about) might be my best option. I do realize they would have a profit motive to not inform me of this option for trying to get my alternator functioning. Hopefully they'll propose some way of resolving this because I don't want to be left with nothing to show for that $1394 expense (especially since I'm paying it off as an Uber driver).
Hi Eli, We appreciate the feedback. We would never offer to spray off a oil saturated and failed alternator and insinuate that it can be driven away. It takes a good deal of time to get access to your alternator in that car and it'd be a rip off to charge the labor it takes to get in there, spray it down, and re-assemble. Its very unlikely it would operate even if you did spray it out. No shop with a license or reputation would demonstrate that as an option for a failed alternator. We did point out the massive oil and coolant leaks on the front end that killed your old alternator and advised they get fixed as soon as time and finances allowed closer to home. These leaks killed your first alternator. Our repair did not lead to a second failure, the leaks likely did however we have not been given the oppurtunity to evaluate.. This is why we spent time showing you under the car and the leaks, to impress how important it was that they get fixed to not kill the value you get from our work. The extra time spent on your car at no charge was to clean up as much leakage as we could from the engine and coolant leaks. When you called and said you had experienced failures, I offered to re-check the alternator and systems. I'm really at a loss of what we could have done better or differently. We used the best part we could, we gave more labor than we charged for, and warned you of why it failed and advised on how to prevent future failures. I don't see any wrong doing on our part that needs to be made right. The matter of our job costing $1000 more than an Autozone alternator is irrelevant. You paid $578 for the part. VW gets $675 for it. I will not compare this to an Autozone over the counter part. We charged $589 for 7 hours of labor to replace that part and clean leakage off the car. We added 4 quarts of oil to the engine as it was dangerously low. We also had a separate line in asterisks stating the oil leakage into the alternator cannot be warrantied. I can't send a alternator full of oil back for warranty. I only hope this all makes some sense to you, or at least the rest of the internet that reads it. Frank
- Mike Larbre Automotive