A-1 Transmission

First I would like to say that we didn’t actually have mechanic work done — otherwise this would probably be a 5 star. My son’s car was running rough. I don’t know all the specifics. He took it to Firestone because they were close and could look at it that day. They came up with transmission sensors and charged $ 115 for diagnostics. Their final quote for repair was way over $ 1000. He took the car and the more he drove it the more he realized it wasn’t transmission. He took it to A-​1 because I had offered to have his brakes done there. The guy (I apologize I don’t know his name) took awhile to look at it. He put it on the diagnostic computer and said what Firestone listed just didn’t make sense. He said it was input or output. He pulled some things and looked at the catalytic converter. He saw it was plugged and cleaned it out, but said it needed replacing. He said he could do it, but it would take a lot longer because that isn’t what his shop did — they were transmissions. When my son asked what he owed, the gentleman said that since he had been gouged once already he wouldn’t charge him anything. That is so unbelievable and special. Thank you A-​1 for being honest and kind and doing what you do to help people — not rip them off. If my car wasn’t getting oil changes for free and had any specific issues I would definitely bring it to you. Alas, it is a Subaru with low miles and never has issues. Be well, gentleman.

I would give zero stars if I could. We made an appointment to have our transmission replaced. Ray is very nice but our car was there for OVER THREE WEEKS. In all that time I only got one phone call. Their communication skills are severely lacking. We asked several times if while they were working on our car they could also replace the power steering tensioner and and do the oil change. Neither was done. I was going to forgive all of this because hey, things happen but when we FINALLY got out car back the thing is FILLED with rat poop. I am horrified!!! I have dogs and kids. This is our family car, filled with rat feces which carries disease! How could they let that happen. That is no way to treat costumers property. Lucky they didn’t chew anything but now I have to sanitize every surface in the car before my family is allowed back in it.

This place was great. We got an Amazon Local deal to this place and decided to check it out. We knew something was up with our brakes (the metal grinding sound) and not sure what it was so we brought it in.
After an hour or so, we got a call that there was a rock stuck in our brakes and that there was nothing wrong with our brakes. He said it was good to go. So we drove in and he didn’t even take our coupon.
Friendly guy. The way we were treated today was great. I love how honest this place was. It would have been easy to upsell us on something we didn’t know, but he was totally honest.
We will definitely be back. Great experience.

THIS REVIEW IS ON CUSTOMER SERVICE ONLY!
Just got back from A1 and had a talk with Jay at the front desk. He was very courteous and the price for a transmission rebuild was was definitely a deal. I did not even tell them I am military for the 15% discount yet. I will take my transmission work to them and will post again on the Mechanic service.

I purchased an Amazon local coupon for this place because my brakes were soft and i figured I needed new rear brakes. They test drove it and looked at the brakes only to find that the alignment was off and my brakes were fine. They could have easily not told me and redeemed the coupon anyway but instead they cleaned the brakes, readjusted them, and tightened my emergency brake free of charge. They said my coupon is still good and transferable so i can give it to a friend! Also the bus that takes you to the Lakewood tc is right in front of their driveway which is very convenient. The staff was courteous and i can say i would certainly recommend this establishment.

I bought a deal on Amazon Local to get my front brakes done on Feb 14^th. When I got the voucher I called and set up an appointment for Mar 7^th. The gentleman on the phone was nice. So far so good.
The day before I was supposed to go in to get the brakes fixed they called me at 3pm and I wasn’t available to answer and couldn’t call them back during normal hours of operation. I showed up the next morning at 10am for the appointment. The guy at the front desk said he tried calling to let me know brake jobs were taking 2 – 4 hours since the machine shop they send the rotors to was lacking in workers. They had called the machine shop and let them know they were running this promotion a month ahead of time so they could schedule accordingly for a bit higher volume of customer but the machine shop I guess ignored it. Not that big of a deal, wish they could have let me know a bit sooner than the day beforehand since they had already been running into this issue but I was able to borrow someones car for a while so we didn’t have to sit at the shop all day. The guy also let us know the owner had authorized them to sell the rotors at cost if they were not able to be resurfaced and instead needed to be replaced (ours were $ 90 a piece).
I ran around for a little while with my husband and son while they had our car thinking it would only be for a few hours. At about 1pm we got a call that the rotors were too run down so we had to replace them. We gave the OK and waited a bit longer. 3pm rolls around, nothing. We were driving back to try and avoid traffic so we stopped in and they told us that they had ordered the wrong rotors (our car is a 2002 but was manufactured in 2001 which threw them off when ordering the parts) so they had to send them back and juuuuuust got the right ones in. It would take them an hour to put the car back together. I had to call and cancel an appointment I had at 4:30pm since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make it. So we stayed in the area and hung out for over an hour trying to kill time, still nothing. We drove by and the car was sitting there, done in the parking lot and no one had bothered to call to let us know.
My husband swung in to pay. The first guy we had dealt with and another guy were in the office arguing, didn’t even acknowledge he was standing there with his card out ready to pay. When they finally stopped arguing, the front desk guy explained that we needed more work done on the car including the rear brakes that needed to be replaced anywhere from 3 months to a year depending on driving condition, while the guy he was arguing with before chimes in with «Just tell them they have 3 months! Didn’t you go over this with them already?» which turned into another argument between the two. My husband paid and left. The sunroof was open when he had gotten in the car as well and we definitely didn’t need to open the sunroof at 10am in the morning when we dropped it off. Checked the mileage on the car and there was two additional miles which could have been freeway driving to check the brakes since they were right off of the exit. We actually got home at around 5pm-​ish.
Now the first guy we spoke to was really nice and courteous, except in the case where he was arguing with the other guy in the office. We tried to be really understanding about the situation with the machine shop (that was out of their control) and having to replace the rotors (again nothing they could do about it) but after spending our whole day waiting to get our car back, having to cancel appointments, lack of communication on what was happening and passing by to see our car was done and sitting in the lot without receiving a call and no apology or an attempt to make things right we will not be going back there and do not recommend anyone go there to get work done.