Merlin Motors

My girlfriend’s parents got me a gift certificate to detail my car through Merlin Motors. Merlin Motors subcontracted that out through Portland’s best car wash or something like that. The man who was supposed to detail my car was not big on details and after a number of miscommunications, he offered to refund me the gift certificate, fine. I tried contacting him a couple times to do this and eventually spoke to the people at Merlin Motors. Once I got ahold of them, everything went much smoother. They were very professional, assured me I’d get my money back, and promised to write me a check themselves if the subcontractor didn’t send me the check. A few days later I got a check from Merlin Motors for the full amount of the car wash. While dealing with the subcontractor who they were previously working with was a headache, the people at Merlin Motors were great and as soon as they got wind of what was going on worked quickly to make it right. Thanks!

I live a couple blocks away from Merlin Motors and when I still had my Volkswagen Passat (which constantly gave me problems — do not buy a car in Lewiston, people and you may already know that) I took my car to Natik every couple of months, when it gave me trouble. Not once did he charge me for bringing it by to get looked at, when he could not find the problem /​or there wasn’t an apparent problem with the car. I had my oil changed there many times and it always ended up being cheaper than the big guys (Meineke, and others), as they never tried to up-​sell me anything with an oil change, like many others are trained to do at chain locations.
Natik opens at 8am and closes at 7pm and my working schedule is 10 – 6 so if I ever need to drop off my car I typically take it in at 8am and either pick it up after work or have my boyfriend pick it up in the middle of the day, as they almost never keep a car for more than a day. If he needs to order a part for you and keep your car longer, Natik or the woman in his office will let you know. They might not tell everyone this, but I just know from small talk with them, they really prefer not to keep a car for more than a day, since their car lot is so small and they need the extra space for cars that are actually for sale. This is especially true in the winter, due to the snow. I’ve never had an issue with them calling me back to tell me what the problem is or if my car is ready for pick up. Also, almost every time I had work done on my car by Natik (maybe 3 – 4 times) the final cost was at least 10−15% lower than what he quoted originally. I’m not sure if this is the case for everyone, obviously everyone’s car and experience is different, but he definitely charges a fair price and offers speedy service. If he can’t find anything wrong with your car — he will not charge you for looking at it. This was amazing because my ’02 Passat really had some trouble before I just traded it in, in Dec. 2013.
My boyfriend takes both his Jeep and Jetta sedan to Natik on the regular and we’ve never had any trouble with them — only good service and competitive prices. I recommend Merlin to my friends and family members — especially those who have foreign cars.

Part of me hurts to write this, but I feel the need to warn others. We had several terrible experiences at Merlin Motors. The owner is EXTREMELY nice, but the woman working at the front desk left both my mother and I extremely rude voicemails in a pushy, unprofessional way asking us to pick up the car when no one had even informed us it was finished! Aside from this, they once worked on the car without permission and I also believe an employee twice siphoned gasoline out of the vehicle. I almost laugh writing this, but twice the car was dropped off with gas in it, and both times when I re-​entered the car, «0 miles» read on the screen. For any Saab drivers, you know how hard it is to get the car down to 0 miles. I was scared to even drive the car to the gas station to refuel, but thankfully made it safely. Even if they did run out of gas on the test drive, it would’ve been polite to add a few gallons or at least INFORM me. Neither of these steps were taken. I would not recommend Merlin Motors despite the kind owner, and hopefully my experience was an outlying one.