A man named Gary Sunshine, per his business card, worked on my car for 90 minutes. The solution wasn't apparent, and at the end of the first day, I no longer had "emergency service" and the car entered the normal queue.
He asked if there were any clues that could save him time and me money. I appreciated this. I started with "Well, last summer the electrical system, which I never fixed, was acting up--". He cut me off, and told me that last summer was ancient history for a car. I was flustered and no more information was provided to him.
The car wasn't worked on July 13th (Friday). He asked me to continue what I was saying earlier about last summer. I told him the symptoms, which aligned somewhat with the issues the car was having. In my opinion, he was quite rude over the telephone when I asked him random questions about the prospect of the car.
Somewhere in there I became frustrated at the number of hours I was being told it would take to diagnose, and told them a hard limit of $400 labor. They agreed to this. The car wasn't worked on during Tuesday or Wednesday. I stopped by in person to collect my bicycle for transportation, which was in the trunk of the car. At this point, I had a NYC vacation coming up for 5 days, and told him he could have as long as he wanted over that span. I left that Thursday for NYC.
When I got back on Tuesday, I called. He hadn't logged a single hour on the car. He started to tell me they had a death in the family. It was my opinion that this was an excuse, and I became irritated with the delays.
I indicated the car had been there for 13 days, and asked if I could get a rebate. He scolded me, telling me that's not how it works. I was upset and told him he's not to work on the car any longer. I would provide to have it towed out. He said fine, and we ended the call.
Today, the 25th of July, I called to pay him the 90 minutes of labor. He told me it was too bad I decided yesterday not to work on the car anymore because he would have been done by now. In my opinion, this was an unreasonable thing to tell a customer. Further, he told me he was happy to get rid of the car because it was going to be difficult work.
I haven't enjoyed my experience.