Rick Johnson Auto & Tire Watch Out! NAPLES Florida

Watch out consumers!

 On 8/5/2014 I had a check engine light on my 2004 Ford Taurus. The car was running poorly (missing). I Dropped it off at my local Rick Johnson Auto and tire shop in NaplesFlorida to have the car looked at.

 About an hour later one of the guys called me with an estimate and told me that the three ignition coils on the back side of the engine were the problem. I’m thinking all three? It was probably one bad coil but they didn’t know which one so they quoted all three. He said that since we had to go through the trouble to replace the coils that we should replace the spark plugs and perform an injector service as well.

 The estimate came to a little more than $1000. I asked him why so much and he stated that you had to remove the intake manifold to access the rear ignition coils, that it was labor intensive (3 hours @ $99.50) and that the parts (coils) were expensive. I did agree to the job minus the fuel injector cleaning which brought the total to $924.76. I thought about shopping the job but to save $50 or $100 was not worth driving around with a broken car.

When I got the car back it had been washed, looked good and ran well. I paid the bill by credit card and was done.

8/15/2014, 10 days later the check engine light came back on. Is the problem related to the last repair? I can’t say. This caused me to pull the last repair bill out and have another look.

I know the coils are expensive but $156.99 each? To check I called my local ford dealer to price the individual coils. I got a quote of $67.01 from my local Ford dealer, oops!

I went back to Rick Johnson and spoke with Pavel Babaev who was the manager at the store that preformed the work.

I suggested to him that there was a mistake on my bill. He asked my why I thought that. I told him that the price that they charged me for the coils was out of line. He asked me where I was coming from and what made me think that. I told him that that the dealer quoted me $67 for a coil.

He then went on about the reason for his charge was that his parts carry a lifetime warranty and how was he supposed to pay his mechanics? and so on and so forth. He also stated that his cost for each coil from his supplier was $110. I went on line and could not find a coil for my car that was more than $50. I told him that he over charged me and I ask him to do the right thing and refund my credit card $300.

 Pavel Babaev stated that he would be loosing money on the job and that he could not give me $300. He did offer some no charge service to like an oil change or the like. I declined his offer and left the store.

Ten minutes he called me back to let me know that he had call my local Ford dealer and that they quoted him $126 per ignition coil. I could not argue that at the time. He offered to refund me the difference between his price and the dealers quote. I told him that I would think about it and for him to call me that next week. I then was curious about the pricing at the Ford Dealer and call another dealer and received a quote of $71 and not $126. I called Pavel Babaev (The Manager) back and told him that I thought he was being less than truthful with me and that I would seek other avenues to resolve this issue.