Firestone Complete Auto Care Firestone will sell you ANYTHING (or nothing, rather) for lots and lots of money Riverdale Maryland

Saturday July 19th: I take my car to the Riverdale Firestone in the mid morning - 10:30 am approximately. I ask for an alignment and tire rotation if it looks like it's needed. I have the lifetime alignment/balance/rotation package, so this (in theory) will be a no-charge trip. They offer a courtesy inspection as well.

I am told the car will be ready by 6pm and I leave it with them while I go off for the day with a friend. Having not heard back by around 4:30pm I call to see if my car is ready. I am told that they could not do anything to it because of a bent left front spindle which needs replacing as well as a steering hub and knuckle. They ask me over the phone if I'd like to prepay (it'll be $800) and I said no thanks. I was not told this would be an issue later.

I arrive at Firestone and am then told that because I didn't authorize the repairs to be made and didn't put down a deposit and because the dealership is now closed, it'll be Monday before I can have the parts ordered and it'll be the following saturday before the repairs can be done. Great - a day with my car in the shop for nothing. Even better, they cannot take credit cards over the phone all of a sudden (they have before when they "forgot" to charge me while I was at the store, a whole other story) and close at 6pm (2 hours before I generally make it home from work) so I am told I can just wait till next saturday to pay for the parts and have them ordered from the dealership. Not acceptable really, considering that would mean I'd have to wait ANOTHER week for the parts to be delivered and have the car fixed. After much pleading, I am finally told to come by at 7am on Monday and they'll "compromise" with me. I still don't know what would have happen with that because I ended up feeling ill monday morning and calling in sick to work which let me run by Firestone during normal business hours and prepay for the dealership parts.

Saturday July 26th: 10am, I call Firestone to confirm my parts have arrived. I am told that they have.
I take my car in for the 2nd saturday in a row. I leave it there and go off with the friend who drove me again. Again I am told the car will be done by 6pm but as the day goes on I hear nothing. I call around 3:30 to ask the status and am told that the parts that were ordered were actually wrong and new parts had to be ordered from the dealership. They say they'll be arriving any minute and the car will be done by 6pm still.

5:30 comes and goes without a call. I call back and am told that they have been having trouble removing the old parts from my car because "they've been on there for the life of the car and are stuck." I sigh but tell them fine, whatever. I am told the car will be ready by 11am on Sunday.

Sunday July 27th: At 12 noon I call to see if the car is done and am told it is. I get a ride over to pick it up and pay. Not a minute goes by of driving towards home before I hear a sound I've never heard before and feel a grinding feeling coming from somewhere under the driver's side wheel area. I drive a few miles towards home hoping the sound/feeling will go away but it doesn't so I call Firestone back to ask Ricardo if this is just the sound of a new part breaking in. He says it shouldn't be making any sounds and to come back. I take the car right back and a different technician rides along with me to hear the sound. He theorizes about what it is, another part that has worn out.

Now here's the part where I start to get VERY angry and confused. This new part (I forget the name) was not broken or worn out on Saturday the 19th when I brought the car in the first time or on the 26th the 2nd time. NOW, after they've done $800 worth of repairs, IT IS? Someone explain that to me?

Ricardo tells me that they have to replace this new part, and yes, I have to pay for it cause it has nothing to do with them. I protest that it wasn't broken on Saturday when I brought the car in, I've never heard that sound or felt that grinding before, and if it WAS broken or worn out to begin with how come they didn't catch it the first time around (cause literally, it was right there next to what they were fixing, he even showed it to me.) Not so much as an apology for my inconvenience or for missing it or anything. Just "here's what it'll cost." I was LIVID at this point. I told him flat out that I didn't believe him and I think they're jerking me around but of course I know full well that my choices are limited. If I take the car somewhere else for a 2nd opinion I'm just spending more time and money for an inspection that will obviously turn out to show I need the part cause there was no question that regardless of how it happened, the part was now broken or warped. The car was making a horrible rattling and grinding noise! I'm not questioning that, it's just that it somehow happened in the 24 hours since I first dropped off the car for repair.

I was admittedly very angry. As you can see from the story so far, I'd been jerked around and made to wait a little too much for my tolerance. And now to have to pay for a part that wasn't even broken when I brought the car in???

I told Ricardo that I would pay for the new part but I wasn't paying for labor. A savings of $50. The part itself was $67 with tax. I was angry and just wanted to go home with a fixed car at that point but now, the next day, I believe that I shouldn't have had to pay at all for something that wasn't broken until after they had "fixed" the car.

It's not even the money, rather it's the way I was treated. The funniest thing is that right there at the cash register, on the penpad for the credit cards, it reads "Committed to providing customer satisfaction with every experience" or some BS like that. Wow! Are they kidding.

I am taking action with the consumer relations department and asking for the $67 back. I probably should have asked for more but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that the original repairs were legitimate. Nonetheless, don't go to Firestone and if you do, don't pay for a cent more than the original repair you came in asking for.

Rainbocarnage
Silver Spring, Maryland
U.S.A.

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