We took the Nissan minivan to Aamco to fix a hard gear shifting problem. They told us they will charge $70 per hour for diagnostic. After 3 days they said they found out the problem was caused by a malfunctioning
Trottle position sensor. Parts and labor and diagnostic caused 408 dollars. So we told them to replace the sensor.
But after they replaced it, they hard shifting remained, then they make up story that the airbag had deployed in an accident. (We had an accident before, it was a side scratch and the airbag had never deployed. I even called MIDway Nissan that did the repairing to confirm it. The
airbag was never deployed) And the deployment of the airbag had caused damage to the ECM card that was just in front of the airbag. Since the ECM card was damaged, it would send false signal to the sensor that generate the hard shifting. (Note, the minor accident happened 3 years ago and we never had any hard shifting until recently). Aamco said they need to do further diagnostic to troubleshoot different area.
At this time, we grew suspicous of their ability to fix our problem. But they would not give the minivan back to us unless we paid for the work they had done that did not solved the problem. We did not have any choice but to pay them to get back our vehicle. We managed to negotiate 100 dollars off the bill. We paid $308 to get back our minivan with the hard shifting condition never improved.
Then we took the minivan to Midway Nissan to look at the problem and they found different reason that caused the hard shifting. They found the engine mounds and transmission mounds had cracked, thus the transmission was not held in a sturdy position and moved a little bit when shifting gear and so we felt the hard shifting. They recommanded to replace the transmission mounds and engine mounds.
We authorized them to do the job and the problem is gone.
From this whole event, Aamco was looking at the wrong place and did the fixing that was not neccessary and charged us money for it.
We felt that we need not pay the money because they concluded on an area that did not cause the problem.
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