On: 11-23-02
These people are a joke! Normally I do all of my own work on my vehicles as I do not trust others and can not afford to take them to a shop. I discovered my alteranator was starting to fail on my 1996 Toyota Landcruiser. I called around to determine some pricing for a replacement figuring to just do the work myself as any almost any monkey should be able to install an alternator (I thought but was proved wrong) including myself.
On calling around I was suprised at the price of rebuilt alternators for my rig as there are no longer new ones available. When I called Start Mart, again I was suprised but pleasantly at the price of a rebuild with installation and lifetime warranty quoted at $119.95.
I thought, "Great!" My son and I had some busisness in the area so I figured I would drop it off and return when it was all done. I returned in two hours and they claimed they were finished. I paid plus a $40.00 Labor charge and a $5.50 environmental fee and went out to inspect the work.
In hindsight, this should have been done first, my stupidity, and found they had overlapped two of the almost brand new alternator belts on the crankshaft pulley shredding them to total destruction when they started the engine.
When I confronted Walt with the problem, Walt was "surprised" at the problem and vowed to fix it. Over the next three hours, mind you it was only supposed to take two hours originally to do the entire job, they proceeded to continue to screw up my vehicle. They dismantled the entire engine compartment, removed both battery boxes and adjacent pumps and hardware all unnecessarily.
After all was said and done, and I had argued that both of the belts need to be replaced and must match or else their diameters would be different and would wear unevenly, they were "finished". They would not refund me my money for the labor portion of the bill as they had felt they did a quality installation, what a joke!
The next day, I went down to the truck and fixed all their screw ups.
#1) Loose mounting hardware on the alternator.
#2) Missing live terminal cap on the alternator.
#3) Crappy, low budget replacement belts for the beefy factory original regulary maintained ones I had on and they kindly shredded for me.
#4) Had to replace both sets of battery cables as they over tightened them and cracked the clamps not to mention the impropper orientation after reinstallation.
#5) The missing live battery terminal caps (2) I had to replace as they just dissapeared.
#6) Loss of my time, approximately 8 hours fixing things and running around like a meat popsicle.
Final dammages: Originally "work" $182.35 My parts $96.51 My time $Invaluable = a grand screwing total of $251.86. It would have been about the same price if I had just bought the more expensive alternator elsewhere and the install would have been minus the associated stress and lack of craftmanship as I would have done it myself.
When I called the store to complain, Walt explained to me that I was probably the one who broke everything and that his "professional mechanics" (what a joke) did nothing but excellent work on my vehicle, HA! I was refered to the regional manager Rob who to this day has not returned my many calls.
The super terrific alternator now has a grand total of 870 miles on it and it is failing, the old one only made it 140,000 before it failed, good work guys! So I will be replacing it this afternoon, more bucks. I have called my credit card company and disputed the charges as it was nothing short of fraud. Do not buy from these in competent people!!! Rip off!!!
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