Extremely disappointed with this shop – especially with Michael, the owner.
I live in Miami and decided to bring my 500SL to this place, which is 50 miles away, based on a couple of good reviews I had read. Learning that the owner was German made sense for me to give it a try. My car is in very good condition but had some minor issues – steering wheel off-centered and shook a little at speed, a broken air vent, passenger seat memory not working, seat belt cover broken, light knob bulb not working when fog lights on. That was mainly it.
So, I dropped the car and gave Michael my to-do list, and told him I was not hurried but wanted the job well done. I am very meticulous and love my car.
I assumed it would take a week – 10 days at most. After not hearing from him for a week I decided to stop by the shop, just to find my car outside under the sun and dirty. They had not even started working on it. So, I reached out to Michael asking for the progress made. He did not know, he just asked one of the employees – who in turn said they were waiting for some parts to arrive.
I told Michael I wanted him to get involved in my car, rather than his employees… I already started to get disappointed, but at that point there was no way back. I asked for an estimate, he said it would be around $1500, which included alignment and balance, replacing the broken parts and labor.
I ended up waiting for more than a month to get the car back just to find that most of the issues were not fixed. He told me the rims were bent, the tires were bad, the steering arms were wasted. All those needed to be replaced in order to get rid of the vibration and to be able to perform alignment. Also he said some of the parts – like the air vent was impossible to get….really??? They said they had fixed the seat memory, which they did not. The light knob bulb was not fixed either. And for the seat belt cover they used glue instead of replacing the broken part, but obviously that did not work… Michael said they would have to spend 2 hours to disassemble and fix it, which did not make sense for him… Really!!!! They had the car sitting for over a month but they could not spend two hours to fix that thing…?? Moreover, Michael told me they use third parties for everything (they don’t even know how or have the tools to perform alignment and balance…).
At that time I only wanted to get my car as it was and leave.
To make the story short, I ended up paying $4,000. The car was filthy inside and out, it still shakes at above 60mph, the steering wheel is well off-centered, the air vent is still broken as it is the seat belt cover, and the seat position memory do not work. I cannot feel worse about it…
I hope my bad experience will help others. Just avoid this place. They are everything but honest. May be you could stop by if you need an oil and filter change, but that’s it. Don’t go beyond that.