In December my car began having problems keeping a charge on the battery. I replaced the battery with a new one and all was fine for another two days or so, then it died again. I paid for a diagnostic to discover my car had a bad alternator. I shopped around and found Start Mart to be the most inexpensive place to get another alternator anywhere in the Phoenix area.
I called Start Mart and they told me to bring my vehicle into their shop to take a look at, but obviously this couldn't be done, since it wouldn't run. The manager then suggested I pull the alternator myself and bring it in, which I did. They tested the alternator and informed me that the internal brushes were bad, but they didn't have another alternator in stock to replace it. They offered to rebuild it while I waited and 30 min later I was off and running.
I installed the alternator into my car and made sure my Battery was fully charged as suggested by Start Mart staff so I didn't burn out my electical system. Well, everything went good and we had our car back... At least for a month.By the end of January I started experiencing problems with the battery not taking a charge again. I bought another new battery thinking my previous new battery was bad, but three days later I had no power again.
By this time, I was done messing around and broke down to have a diagnostic completed on the car. I towed it to a local business called Sun Devil Auto who called me later to tell me the alternator was so bad that it acutally fried part of the electrical system to my car.
Mad as hell, I called Start Mart and spoke with Manny, the manager on duty. I explained to him that the alternator his business rebuilt for me was defective, or at least the work they did. He told me that since I was outside the 30 day warranty, He could only prorate the cost for rebuilding it again. I tried to convince him that his receipt indicated a 5yr warranty, but he said that only covered new alternators and not rebuilt ones. Neverthless, he couldn't do anything else for me, but would rebuild it again. Furthermore, they wouldn't honor the warranty because I installed the alternator, and not them.
After threatening to dispute the charge on my Visa account for the service Start Mart completed, the manager told me to do what ever I needed to do then hung up on me (can you beleive that)!
I decided to have the alternator replaced by Sun Devil Auto along with replacement of other damaged parts due to Start Marts poor workmanship, and I have had no problems since then.
Start Mart sucks and will be hearing from me soon in small claimes court in order to get restitution for the damage to my vehicle due to poor workmanship, poor service and poor lack of respect for good business ethics.
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