Morgan Automotive

Morgan Automotive is the worst! I have had 2 very similar experiences with them. Both times they charged me over double the market price for my parts. They also ordered these parts before they even looked at my car. I called ahead of time and told them it would be towed there after hours and he ordered a bunch of parts. I don’t believe I needed everything that he charged me for after talking to other mechanics. I STRONGLY recommend you take your business elsewhere, these people are NOT HONEST!!!

I can’t think of a single auto repair shop that I trust as much as Morgan’s. They have been so honest, helpful, and great when it comes to helping me and my husband keep our cars on the roads. The folks there are so kind. They are the best hand’s down.

Seriously, I have to be the voice of reason here? Apparently, another Jake P. posted a negative review just as I was getting my last service here — weird, but it caught the owner’s eye when I mentioned I was planning a Unilocal review.
Okay, for starters, if you’re taking your cherry 1967 Chevy into an auto mechanic’s shop *you’re doing it wrong*. Owning that kind of precision classic or any other requires that you learn how to maintain it yourself. Stop complaining if you’re going to be so picky about your vehicle.
How about for the rest of us, for whom our vehicle is a prized method of conveyance? How about for those of us who are about to go on long trips on dangerous roads and want to feel safe in their vehicle’s performance?
Morgan Automotive rates very well there, if you ask me. I have been getting semi-​regular service from them ever since they fixed a brake rotor issue leftover from a bad mechanic back on the East Coast. They provide quick and friendly service, and have some really interestingly colorful drivers if you need a lift somewhere, should you take the time to talk with them. Generally, I get my car back in 1 – 2 days even on major issues such as a recent engine oil leak.
Brian, who works the front desk, is glad to explain things and has given me a pretty honest opinion about work that doesn’t need to be done — he’s warned me of future service milestones, but hasn’t even come close to pressuring me to have them taken care of outside my budget. I just spent only a little over $ 300 for work ranging from an oil change and wiper replacement to a tire rotation, transmission flush, and oil leak fix.
They’ve never mishandled my 140,000+ mile Toyota, and they’ve worked on everything from the transmission to the tires to the AC. This car has been cross-​country three times, and it’s taken a beating — but thanks in part to these fine folks, it seems I’ll at least break 200k.
My only complaint? They are pretty hard to get to these days, what with the Sellwood Max Line work over there near Powell. Once that’s done they should actually be more convenient.

I brought my car here to have two new tires mounted.
They put my car up on a lift that was not at all the right equipment to be lifting this particular model. It put most of the weight of the car on what is basically the weakest point you can possibly use. I had left while they were working (assuming this was the simplest job they could possibly have to do), so I only discovered it when I came back to pick up my car. When I pointed out what they had done wrong (with the car still on the lift), the owner looked nervous (or something) and tried to tell me that it wasn’t the wrong way to lift it. (This is a 1960s car. I do all of my own maintenance and repair — I just needed someone to mount a couple of tires — and this is the third model of this same vehicle that I have owned. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt how to safely jack it up and where not to jack it up.)
I politely explained to him why he was wrong. He then, without a word, lowered the car back to the ground, got in and drove it onto a different style of lift. This other lift was too high of an incline to drive this car onto. The car bottomed out on the lift. He backed it up, parked, got out and went inside. I followed and he gave me my bill.
My point is – After abusing my car like that, you would think an honest mechanic would offer to at least make sure everything was alright (not cause further damage and then give up) and/​or offer some kind of discount.
I was disapointed and have no plans to go back nor recommend them to anyone.

The owner and/​or the manager of the shop called me few months after posting on Google about my experience. I was very impressed by the courtesy and he told me that he will return the $ 45 that was charged for labor if I put down the review. I put down the review right after I got off the phone with him. When I received my refund in mail, I was not for the full amount of $ 45 as I was told on the phone. I received exactly half of that. I don’t care about $ 22.50, its the whole ethics behind it. Telling a customer something else on the phone so they can take the review down, and than pay them just 50% of it. Sneaky right? This is also called half-​ass service! One interesting thing I noticed is that on Google all their reviews are positive, yet they are all negative here at Unilocal.That says something doesn’t it?
Original post on Google in 2011:
Pretty disappointed! The shop charges too much for labor. I got changed $ 260 for just labor on alignment, drive belts, and MAF señor replacement (brought my own dealership parts). I told them that my fog lights are not working and they told that they will charge $ 45 to diagnose it. The bulbs were out and they still charged me $ 45 extra for simple diagnostic that probably took them 2 minutes. After the first time customer discount of $ 100 my total was pretty close to $ 200!!! I defiantly feel like I didn’t really save any money. I really thought that they would not charge me the extra $ 45 for the diagnostics on a simple fog light bulb replacement. But they want every hard earned penny from you! I would have been very satisfied if they didn’t charge to diagnose a simple bulb replacement.

Any big repairs on my car I take here.
This is the first repair shop to make me feel like I’m not getting cheated out of money. They’ve fixed all my car problems at a reasonable cost, which is much appreciated when you are a poor college student.
Repairs are timely and are usually finished that day unless waiting for a part to come in.
This is also the first auto shop to not try and sell me on all the other unnecessary things I need to replace on my car.
I’ve never written a review on Unilocal before because I’ve never found a place that really «wowed» me on their customer service but I highly recommend this shop.

I’ve had two experiences with Morgan and overall I am disappointed. While they may come across as thorough, they mostly came across as money-​grabbing. Here’s a few more details.
I have a 1996 honda civic, and a headlight bulb that burnt out twice in a year. First time I took it to Jiffy Lube and they fixed the bulb for ~$ 20 or so. That lasted less than a year, so I took it to Morgan’s. They insisted on replacing the entire Headlight, which was like $ 250 or so for each (they graciously gave me a discount so it was only about $ 400 for the pair). They convinced me that just replacing the bulb was insufficent.
This time my driver side power door window was off kilter (still rolling partially but off track, I rolled it down with a sticker attached to the inside and that messed it up) and the clerk said I’d need to replace the entire window seal around the window. He gave a rough estimate of cost as 2 hours of labor + roughly $ 150 – 200 part. It was a rough estimate of about $ 350 – 400. When I asked if there was any way around that, he didn’t even say, well maybe, let me take a look. I needed it done now, and they couldn’t so I left.
I then took my car to a different auto shop which rather than talking to me for 5 minutes about it, just opened up the door, tested for a few common sites of broken parts (which were intact and working fine), slipped it back into place, and 5 minutes later I drove away with a functional window like it was before. They didn’t even charge me for it because it took so little effort!
Morgan had said they were super busy, which is fine, so it’s not like they actually looked at it. Yet, I asked the mechanic if there was any chance of just getting it fixed quickly and he really shot me down, saying that he’d done many of these and it was pretty common. (A line used when they sold me on the headlights)
In the end, I feel cheated by them. I can see how they might want to ‘do things the right way’ or something like that, but on my beat up super old car, spending $ 400 is about ¹⁄₃ to ¼ of the cost of the car. Being thorough is not a bad quality, but they really missed the mark on this one. In the end, I’m glad they didn’t have time for me today, as I’ve $ 400 richer because of it.
Get a second opinion on the work if you go here!

After reading many positive reviews and learning that Morgan Automotive had been voted Best Auto Repair 2006 on Citysearch, I made an appointment for my dying Volkswagen. At the end of the day they called me to tell me that virtually everthing was wrong with my car, that everything they found was causing my problem, and that everything was urgent. $ 1500 later I picked up my car with their assurance that my problem had been fixed. It was apparent as I was driving out of their parking lot that the problem was not fixed at all, so the next day I brought it back to them. I asked them to look for anything that could be causing the problem, and mentioned a few very specific things to check. A couple hours later they told me that nothing aside from the previously suggested motor mount replacement (they said my engine was about to fall out) was wrong and that my car was ready to pick up. Once again, the problem was apparent as I drove away. These guys had no idea what they were doing, or what to look for. I felt like they overcharged me, and had no faith or trust in them whatsoever. My car sat undriveable for a month before I took it to Heckmann & Theimann (see my review), a VW specialist, and had my car fixed quickly and for much less money. They also said that my motor mounts did not need to be replaced, which would have been an unecessary $ 800 repair at Morgan Auto.