Austin Auto Repair

Stephen, I was surprised to see your 1-star review of our business: especially 13mo after your only visit to us. I reviewed the invoice for your 1996 Suburban that you brought to us to inspect after you had oil system failure. We only charged $64 for the diagnosis (which is roughly half of competitors rate for engine diagnostics) and we provided you with a quote to replace the engine. Our service advisor made good notes on the ticket that we didn't recommend further tear down to address the knocking noise coming from the lower engine rotating assembly. We provided a quote for a Jasper Engine which carries a Nationwide 3yr/100k mile warranty because your engine had over 225k miles on it, and the cost of rebuilding that lower end without a comparable warranty, is generally not a good spend of a significant amount of money. We're glad you found someone to repair your truck cheaper and we hope it all works out in the end for you.

Mr. Cuartas, I am sorry to hear you are dissatisfied with your experience at our shop. I'd like to address some of your concerns here, as we were not given the opportunity to do so privately. You had your van towed into our shop because it had thrown the belt while you were driving. By the time it arrived, we were already full with appointments and prior committed work. Nonetheless, we worked it into our rotation and eventually had time to get a technician to inspect it. We apologize if two hours was too long for your liking. Upon initial visual inspection, it seemed like a fairly routine repair: the tensioner pully had failed and would need replacing, and the belt would need to be reinstalled. You approved that repair, we ordered the parts and were going to try and get you back on the road the same day. However, once the cracked tensioner was replaced, we attempted to reinstall the serpentine belt only to find that the power steering pump shaft had broken internally (which could not have been noticed during the visual inspection) and the belt could not be reinstalled without future repeat failure. At that moment, we called to advise you of the issue. You mentioned that you had the power steering pump replaced in January elsewhere. We encouraged you to contact the previous repair shop, as it would likely be under part and labor warranty, and was likely the cause of the failure of the belt tensioner. You declined, and advised us to replace the power steering pump, in addition to the belt tensioner. At that time, knowing that another shop had previously made repairs within a few month, we reused the hose clamps that were installed during the earlier repair. In hindsight, perhaps we should have demanded that we replace the old power steering return hose and clamps during our repair, as that is what failed after you picked the van up. We did apologize for you having to return, we addressed the hose, installed a new clamp, refilled the system and got you back on the road as soon as we could. We have discussed this internally and will ensure that we do not reuse other shops components so as to avoid customer satisfaction issues in the future.