Lakewood Auto Repair

I'm not sure why I got this review since she is not the one who brought the car to me! Beth has been a customer for the last 3 years, we have done 6 different repair jobs on 2 different cars for her, including a brake job on her Subaru which cost her $234, which is around the normal price we charge for a brake job, that was in August of 2016, new pads, resurfacing rotors and labor. Her son brought his 2003 Dodge Dakota in for brakes. We quoted $263.00 for the job if we could resurface rotors. When we pulled the rotors to resurface them, we found that the brake pads had worn down to the metal backing plate and ruined the rotors, which means new rotors have to be installed. The new rotors increased the bill by $117 making the new quote to be $380. When our tech went to push the caliper pistons back in to their chambers, he noticed that the phenolic pistons were broken and cracked. We still tried to reset the pistons back into their chambers and brake fluid started leaking out of the cracked portion. We took pictures to show the customer and showed him the bad calipers in person when he picked up his truck. Now rebuilt calipers were needed for the job to be safe for the customer. Pricing out rebuilt calipers came to $95 for the labor to replace the calipers and bleed the brake system, $118 dollars a piece for each caliper, and $15 for brake fluid, increasing the job by another $346, now making the total $726 for the total rebuild of the brake system. Ethan was called and given the new price. A little different sounding from what Beth states, since she makes it sound like all we did was replace a tail light bulb, when instead we replaced the entire tail light assembly! That portion of the bill was $155.96 for parts and labor. The total bill now reached $881.96 plus tax. $118.04 less than what she accused us of! When people have to lie when giving us a bad review, I just have to wonder what their real motive is. Did his mother really want her son driving a dangerous vehicle? This price falls in line with most reputable auto repair businesses. We have to replace rotors on about 20% of our brake jobs and I would say that we only replace calipers on maybe 1% of our brake jobs. We never oversell our work, we are an honest business wanting our customers to feel like they are family. I am sorry that Beth felt that we ripped off her son ("roadside robbery") but I don't break the cars, I just fix them. These brakes were about as bad a they get! During the entire process, we stayed in contact with Ethan, the owner of the truck and he agreed to all work. At one point Ethan's father called just to see what was going on and I explained everything to him and he said that he understood. Beth never called to complain. They could have taken this vehicle to a different shop anytime in the process if they were not happy. Everyone was in the loop with the price and agreed with it. I even let Ethan make a partial payment since he could not afford the entire bill until Monday. How many shops will do something like that? Sorry for the long post, but things must be made clear. Ethan should have been the one making this complaint if he were unhappy, but it did not seem like he was. This is the second time that someone gave my business a 1 star review when they never had me do any work for them. Google needs to address this problem.

Sorry this reply is so long, but I could not see any way to answer without some explaining. Anyone who starts off with a lie, has to be questioned as to their motives and honesty. William Buckley states; "I haven't written a negative review in more years than I can remember." Yet just 2 months ago Mr. Buckley wrote a one star negative review for Wheatridge Animal Hospital and a year ago wrote a 2 star negative review to mHelpDesk and two years ago, wrote a one star negative review to a Firestone auto repair business. I am not against negative reviews when they are deserved, but..... During my phone conversation with Will it seems I misinterpreted a couple of things. I had heard him say that during his technician’s drive to Summit County over the weekend the wheel had come off the vehicle, but the review states it never came off or was loose. However, since now seeing in this review, that the truck completed about 100 miles round trip to Summit County at highway speeds and the estimated 10 miles or so to Brighton, we’re at about 110 miles of driving at interstate speeds. There is no way the wheel would have been left loose and driven for this many miles, especially at interstate speeds. If a wheel is left loose, it will be discovered as loose within the first couple blocks of driving. The training procedure in our shop is to torque all the wheels we remove back to manufacturer specification. Wheel nuts are installed by hand and tightened using a torque stick, so that leaving nuts loose will not happen. With trucks we also go back and re-torque with a torque gauge. This is done as a precaution so that wheel nuts will never be left loose. We probably remove and install 20 to 30 wheels a week. Will states; “I can't afford that level of sloppiness in vehicle service”, an assumption that is not accurate. We work on approximately 2000 vehicles a year. If my shop was that "sloppy" we would not have one of the highest rating in Lakewood for auto repair. If there are any problems we are very quick to say that it was our fault and take care of the problem and any expense associated with the problem. Even when it’s not our fault, there are times when we take care of a problem for free. It’s just good business! During our conversation I was also given the impression that damage had been sustained to the studs or wheel and immediately offered to compensate or fix any issues that had been caused from the situation (not implying that we were responsible for the situation) since Will assumed that we had not tightened the wheel lug nuts. During our conversation Will didn’t correct me and instead asked for free oil changes for his company cars as compensation. We would have been happy to reimburse him for towing or repairs, but needed to understand what he was asking for. When referencing me saying, “it would depend on how many.” I don’t see how that is a bad question. Did he expect unlimited oil changes for the next year or two? He never gave me a number of how many vehicles he thought was fair, just wrote a negative review. We have had several trucks towed into our shop over the years with a wheel that loosened up, not from work done at our shop, just vehicles with wheels loosing up. Most of the time the loose wheel breaks the wheel studs. There are many articles on line as to why wheels can loosen up even if a wheel is torqued properly. A vehicle that has had wheels removed and installed over the years can have stretched and/or fatigued wheel lugs from shops over tightening wheel lug nuts using impact guns without torque sticks leading to tightening problems later on. Here is a link to just one article on the web about loosening wheel nuts: http://www.normarkindustries.com/CausesEffects.htm

Thank you so so much! We so value our customers and look forward to a lifetime relationship!