Midas

These guys will bend over backwards for you and make sure the job gets done. When my heater core went out in my Jeep, the lady that worked there made sure that she got my jeep ready to go by the end of the day, even if it meant she had to keep some guys there after close, which she did. I love going there!

I started taking my car here when I first moved to the area, about 2 and a half years ago. I’ll admit I was lured in by the coupons I get in the mail that advertise an oil change for $ 20. This also includes changing the oil filter, and a look at the brakes, among other things. Frankly, it costs more for me to change my oil myself than to have them do it, so I let them. I went to this Midas 4 times between 2010 and early 2012, and never had a problem.
Then I went again this week.
I dont know if there was a change in management or what, but it was quite different this time. I found the manager or the person who dealt with the customers to be infuriating. He lied to me and his poor grasp of the English language (he’s American, born and raised, BTW) was maddening. First, the oil change. My car takes 7 quarts of oil. The coupon I used (and have used in the past) specifies that it is good for up to 5 quarts. Despite this, I had never been charged for additional oil in the past; this guy tried to charge me. More than that, he also tried to charge me more for my oil filter because it wasnt the kind they typically use or some such nonsense (they had never tried to charge me extra for this before). When he first told me this, the additional charge for the filter was $ 9. As he continued to talk, it went up to $ 11 and then to $ 13 or $ 14. I protested the increased cost and he showed me on his computer where I had «paid» in the upper 30s for this work in the past. I dont know where this came from though, as I looked at my credit card statements from previous trips to Midas for an oil change and the charges are clearly $ 20 plus tax. I could see this wasnt going to be good, so I changed the conversation to another problem with the car. After agreeing to get other things fixed on the car, he told me he’d do the oil change for free. Yet, I was somehow charged $ 20 for it.
After getting my car up on a jack, he told me that I needed a new tire. He showed me that my tire’s steel belts were showing, so this was a legitimate problem. Honestly, I dont know how I hadnt had a blowout up to that point. I asked if they had a tire. They said yes, but it was one I’d never heard of. He told me they could get another one though. I asked if they could get it that day and have it installed that day and he said yes. As we looked through his list of what others were available, he changed his mind and told me he would not be able to get the tire and install it same day. So I got the one he had in stock. When he went to change the tire, he kept saying how one of the lug nuts was going to break. They he would continue by saying if it breaks. Which is it? Is it going to break or is there only a chance of it breaking? He just could not wrap his head around this concept. In the end, the part that was «going to break» didnt. Makes me wonder if they know what they’re doing.
The third problem I had was the biggest: the brakes. Two times ago when I brought the car in, about 10,000 miles ago, I asked how the brakes were (remember, brake check is included with oil change package). They told me they were ok, and that I could get another 10,000 miles out of them. The last time I came in, I asked again, and they said the brakes were fine. So this time, I expected the brakes just about needed to be changed, so I told them to look at them. They did and told me the brakes were shot, needed to be replaced, and that since I’d been riding with them like this for so long, I needed new rotors too. I was really upset with this, because if they had done their job in telling how the brakes were previously, this wouldnt have been an issue — I could have had them replaced last time without replacing the rotors ($ 180 for the pair). I can tell you the brakes were no worse now than they were last time I took the car in. So to sum up, their incompetence/​negligence cost me about $ 200 due to the issue with the rotors. They also charged me an extra $ 50 for a brake sensor (I could have told them not to, but wanted to prevent this in the future, so I let them), but after I got the car back, the sensor didnt work.
For all this, I had to sit in the hot waiting room for 4 hours plus on a 100 degree day. The initial estimate they gave me for all this work was around $ 340, but it ended up being $ 560, and that was with a coupon. The manager/​customer service guy seems to have forgotten to add in labor to the estimate. I dont know if it was just this one guy, or a change in policy or if some of the people there just dont know what they’re doing, but I will never take my car here again.

I brought my car in to the above location over the holidays. After paying in excess of $ 1,500.00, and being told that it was fixed, it died on me days again after a few days. I had it towed back to the store. They told me that it was a defective part they installed and that it was fixed again.
Once again, after driving it for a few days, the car died. The explanation I was offered was that the car was simply out of fuel — and that because the car had a new fuel pump, the gas light gauge worked differently than it had before. Unfortunately, this was a fact not mentioned to me in any way, shape, or form.
To top it off, the employee I spoke with, Jared, refused to deliver the car back to me – even though it was his failure to tell me of the different gauge reading that caused the problem. Moreover, given his tone and stubborn unwillingness to meet the customer’s needs, I will certainly not be returning to Midas at all.
In total, my car has been in the shop 3 different times. And it is still not running as it did before the initial problems. Of course, Jared and the techs say it sounds fine.
«Total care care»…right