AAA Carolinas – Albemarle

be careful when giving this company money! They have services that are supposed to help you when your in desperate need and it all sounds fantastic… Until you sign up and pay for the services. At that point you may be very surprised on how little of help this company can be. For instance if you are stuck on the side of a highway with a flat tire they will refuse to put your spare on unless your spare is the same exact size tire and rim that they are putting back on. Roughly about 90 percent of all vehicles do not come with a full size spare. So yes roughly 90 percent of you will be stuck on the side of a dangerous highway with nothing to do unless you pay them a ton more money to have it towed to your repair facility and hopefully its within 3 miles or your wallet maybe real thin at the end of the day. Also there are a ton of extra little fees with this company… For instance if you forget to renew your tags even a day after being expired for some odd reason that is and extra 50 dollar charge. Unfortunately i was not warned and did not do my research before giving this shady company my money. I found out all this within literally a few hours after signing up called and canceled my membership and requested a whole refund (didnt think i was being unreasonable considering that the company did not do one service for me and i hadnt even had it for a single day yet). Well thats where the icing on the cake is with this company. They refuse to refund you your money after you give it to them. I did get my membership fee back but the new member fee i was told is unrefundable for a reason that they wont and cant explain they just tell you its unrefundable and also they have a fee if you sign up and need service the same day (50 dollar fee) for the guy to go out to you to tell you that your tire and rim isnt the same exact size is unrefundable. If these sneaky fees are explained at the beginning before they take your money that would be understandable. But on the flip side i understand why they dont because if you really dig deep and find all the dirt and shady fees they charge you before servicing your vehicle no one first would have time to listen that long and second they wouldnt have anyone sign up. I see how they get away with it though if anyone like i was that is desperate for help on the side of a dangerous highway is usually willing to pay any fee just to get into a better and safer situation and off the side of the road. I am very disapointed. Just goes to show you just because a company has been around a long time and has a household name from spending millions of dollars in advertisement doesnt mean that they are always trustworthy and honest as the case with this company.

They use the 10% member discount to get people to use their services yet they charge 40−50% more than many other places. They also try to double dip on labor hours for multiple repairs. I had to replace my radiator, radiator hose, and thermometer. After charging me 3.5 hours of labor at $ 105/​hour for replacing the radiator they tried to charge me an additional 3 hours of labor for the radiator hose and thermometer. If you know anything about cars you know it doesn’t take more than an hour to replace the radiator hose and thermometer if you know what you’re doing. I was able to get them to reduce the labor hours but I wouldn’t go back again unless I had to.
There is no price benefit of using AAA even if you are a member. I would recommend going somewhere else if you can.

This is the second time one of the AAA car care centers has done something to confirm why I will never use them again. My wife and I took her car in so they can charge the battery since it had a weak charge. We dropped it off and came back 4 hours later. This guy looked us in the face and said that the battery was basically dead and would not take a charge. He said he doubted that it had enough of a charge to crank. He explained that he hooked it up and could not get the battery to hold a charge. He, of course, suggested a battery from AAA. I know it was a lie because we had the battery tested twice and the second time was the day before we took it in. I looked at him like he was crazy because he was. I told him that we would take our chances on it and that we were not buying a new battery. I took the keys and we walked out. We crunk the car up and drove off. Truly crazy.

I have been using this facility for years for both of my cars and have always been treated fairly and quickly. They also have a shuttle service which is very helpful! Today I found a big nasty nail in one of my tires and took the car in. They repaired it quickly as I did not have an appointment. no charge. Really! What a nice bunch of people that work there, I will «pay it forward»! Thank you