After the transmission in my 89 Cutlass Supreme died I had the car towed to AAMCO. The vehicle would not move forward under it's own power, reverse worked fine. The vehicle was dropped off on a Saturday so it had to sit on AAMCO's lot until Monday morning. Monday morning I spoke to someone from AAMCO, I was told it would be $450 just to pull the transmission. I asked for a rough estimate, they could not give me one, understandable.
Then I asked for an estimate assuming everything in the transmission was bad and had to be replaced. They still could not give me an estimate. It's fairly well known that AAMCO doesn't have a good reputation so I wasn't very trusting and wouldn't give permission to remove the transmission. Once they removed the tranny I knew I would be forced to pay whatever they decided to charge me. Considering the fact that AAMCO only does transmission work, they knew exactly what the problem was as soon as I told them the symptoms. I called another transmission shop in my area, Tran Z Pro, and was given a reasonable estimate, I called AAMCO back, all of a sudden they gave me an estimate, beating Tran Z Pro's estimate.
After many calls back and forth to each tranny shop, each beating the others price with each call, AAMCO gave me a max estimate of $800.00. The other shop, Tran Z Pro, came down to $925.00 and put it in writing. Although Tran Z Pro was $125 more, they had my trust.
Tran Z Pro said they would tow my car from AAMCO to their shop and have the car done and ready to drive the next day. AAMCO gave me an ETA of a week. I didn't give AAMCO permission to anything to my car and was told I owed them nothing. Upon telling AAMCO that I was having the car towed to Tran Z Pro I was told I owed $43.00. Apparently they did some diagnostic work that included test driving the car, without my permission. Since the car wouldn't move in any forward gear I find it hard to believe that they test drove the car, unless they towed it with another car. Tran Z Pro picked up my car, having to pay AAMCO $43.00 before AAMCO would release the car. It's only $43.00, but it was still a fraudulent charge.
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