On June 6th of this year I had my 1995 Mazda 626 repaired at a cost of $1553.84 because the overdrive light kept flashing on and off. Ruben (the center manager) said that metal was coming off of the gears. They rebuilt the transmission, changed the torque converter, and replaced the solenoid set.
Everything was fine for approximately six weeks until the transmission went into default mode and the overdrive light started flashing on and off again. When the transmission detects a fault condition, it puts itself in a mode where it does not shift into overdrive, and flashes the OD light to notify the driver. When in this mode, driving at anywhere near highway speeds the RPM's are so high it feels like the transmission is going to fall apart at any moment.
I went back to the center and they said the transmission was overheating. An external cooler was added on July 20. Again, everything was fine until early October when the transmission detected another fault and put itself in default mode.
Again, I went back to the center and was told that the solenoids had failed. They said they replaced the solenoids and sent me on my way. On December 24, the very same thing happened again.
Throughout this process I have been in contact with AAMCO's customer relations department (Ronnie Vohlpe at 800.523.0401 x313 and Steve Stilwell) who really have not done anything other than send me conciliatory letters.
Every time I go back to the service center I have to drop the car off for the day or longer, causing me to lose time from work, lose money by requiring me to rent a car for a day, in addition to just the overall hassle of not being able to trust my cars reliability.
At this point I just want my money back. I paid AAMCO a good deal of money to fix my car, something which they have failed to do. Furthermore, due to the recurring problems, they have demonstrated that they really don't know how to fix my car. Thus I really have no reason to trust that they will permanently correct the problem on the fourth try. My requests for a refund have fallen on deaf ears.
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