I was browsing the site and noticed several other complaints about the Aamco Transmission company, and I decided to share my piece of the story.
Several years ago I bought a 1994 Hyundai Excel from a nearby car lot (which I've also found out to be a ripoff... The lot's name is Brunner's Auto Sales, and it is located in Fleetwood, PA).
The car came with a 3-month warranty, which turned out to be a great thing. I had noticed the transmission to be rather noisy, but it seemed to pull fine, not slipping, so I decided to live with it.
About 2 1/2 months after purchasing the car, the transmission died altogether. I had the car towed to the Aamco in Reading, Pennsylvania, as it was one of the places the warranty would allow to work on the car. After contacting the warranty company, Aamco replaced the transmission with "a used/rebuilt transmission of equal or lesser mileage." The car only had 65,000 miles on it at that time (roughly).
Upon getting the car back (which was nearly two weeks later, I might add), I noticed the transmission was noisy just as the other one was. At this point, I decided that it must just be characteristic of the Excel. Also, my father, who picked the car up for me, told me that the tech at Aamco told him that he had opened up the transmission and checked it out, and that it was in excellent condition.
Now, Aamco has a 12-month warranty on their work, the "excellent" transmission they put in died 13 months after it was installed. At this point, I was getting pretty tired of the situation, and since it was not longer under warranty I decided to put a used transmission in myself, since I am fairly well-versed on cars, particularly transmissions. I chose a transmission out of a U-pull-it yard and took it home to install it.
The very first thing I noticed was that my transmission (the one from Aamco) was missing about 5 of the bolts that hold it to the engine. What happened? Where they just TOO BUSY to correctly mount my tranny to my engine?
Secondly, after installing the new transmission, which went very easily with less bolts to remove (go figure...), I fired up the car and took it for a spin. The new transmission was ABSOLUTELY SILENT! That noise was the sound of a BAD transmission. Had that Aamco tech actually opened up the trans he installed, he would have definitely seen that it was no good and on its way out... Which leaves me with 2 conclusions. 1) He did not open the transmission at all, and he simply installed a bad one, ignored the noise it made, and passed it off to me, LYING to us in the process... OR 2) He opened it up, saw that it was no good, installed it anyway, heard the noise it made, and still passed it off as a good transmission, again lying to us.
I let the situation go, as the work's warranty had just expired at this point. It also was an easier situation for me, since I was able to cheaply and fairly easily replace the transmission myself, but to the everyday person who is not inclined with vehicles, this situation could have been VERY expensive and unsettling. So, please.
D o n o t t a k e y o u r c a r t o a a m c o!
Please let this be a warning. I hope that at least a few people choose a small shop instead, after reading this article. I would also like to mention that after this situation, I will not take my car to ANY CHAIN SHOP ever again. Either I do the work, or it goes to Ream's Auto in Fleetwood, PA, as the owner is the only person I trust anymore to touch my car.
Hope this helps,
-Concerned Driver in Pennsylvania
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