Brake Check RIP OFF, TIME WASTER, WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE, and they LIE Austin Texas

Brake Check is the SLOWEST and worst run company I've ever delt with.

on 8/26/05 at 12:15 pm my girl friend took her ford exploer to brake check on Ben White they said it would take 2 hours to complete. After 2 hours they said it would only be 20-30 more minutes. After 30 minutes they said "almost done 20 more minutes" well this went on all afternoon, finally at 5pm they were done. Now 5 hours isn't so bad if they had been busy, but my girlfriend was the ONLY person there! Their were 5 mechanics there, 2 were doing yard work, one was on the phone and the other was wondering around. Only one mechanic was doing work and he was the oldest and slowest mechanic there.

After confronting the manager "Vance" with the horribly long wait time, constant lying about completion time, and mechanics doing nothing Vance basically said I was lying. Vance said the mechanics were working, the brake job took that long to do it right, and that no other customers were upset with their service. Well another customer in the waiting room spoke up and said she was upset and her car had $250 worth of work done to it that did not need to be done. She had just taken her car to the dealship after leaving brake check and they said the work was unnecessary. To make a long sotry short, Vance never aplopgized never admitted they did a crappy job, and didn't offer any consolation.

So we called the 1800 number. Don't bother with that number. Its a recording and they say they will call you back and they never do! I contacted the General Manager Marc Lascano 512-773-0556 and he said he'd get back to us. After I called him 4 times he finally got back to me 2 weeks later. He said he was sorry but could not justify any discount. But he did offer some fee oil changes.

This company is VERY poorly run, its a rip-off, they have absolutly NO customer service, they don't care about customers time, and they cost twice as much as a normal mechanic.

One more thing, my mechanic friend said that a normal brake job should take about 2 hours (if the mechanic is slow) and when I read him the invoice they rebuilt the calipers and he said that was INSANE. Rebuilding calipers is time consuming and can make them unsafe. Plus he said new calipers are only $60-$70 and they charged us $35 each just to rebuild them. Why not be safe and give us brand new ones for a little more money and a lot less time. You know why because they would have had to pay for them since they were gaurenteed. So brake check dosen't even care about your safty!

Do not use brake check it is the worst rip-off I've ever seen, it cost us $394.71 to get 2 brakes fixed when some of the parts were already gaurenteed from the last time we had taken the car there. Fixing all of the things they fixed at a normal mechanics would probably have cost $250-$300 and thats with no free replacement parts that brake check gave us. It is NOT worth it to shop at brake check. Their gaurentee costs you more money.

Nick
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.