This incident that i am about to describe happened about 5 years ago. It is my first and only time ever going to Tune Up Masters.
I took my 95 Nissan Maxima into the Tune Up Masters that was at 725 San Pedro Ave to redeem a coupon from the phone book for a tune up that was supposed to cost less than 50 bucks. My Nissan has coil packs which is a little differnt than most cars.in order to change the spark plug you have to pull out the coil pack to get to it.
Half way through the work the manager came to me and said there was a problem. He said two of the coil packs were burnt and need to be replaced. He then showed me two coil packs and sure enough they were burnt. I asked how much they would cost to replace and he said 230.00 dollars more than what i was already paying! I was stunned, but i asked him to seperate the parts and labor. The parts were going to be 85 dollars a piece and the labor was going to be 60 bucks. I then asked what was involved in the labor and he said it was a matter of removing the coil packs and replacing them. I had a big problem with this because the coil packs were already out of the car because he had to take them out in order to change the plugs in the first place, it cost less than 50 bucks anyway for the entire tune up. So i asked him why he was going to charge me twice for something he was only going to do once. He said that it was considered a second job and that the reason it was more expensive is because It was not part of the special offer. At this time i told him i need to make a phone call and i called autozone to see how much my coil packs were and they said they were 45 dollars. I went back to the manager and asked why he was charging so much for the parts and he said that was what his company charge. Of course everyone knows that he was also going to get the parts from either autozone or another parts dealer that was similar. Then i said i would go to autozone and buy the parts and come back. He told me if i did that he couldnt garuntee the work and he would have to charge me storage for the time it took me to go get the parts. I was really mad then.
I told him to finish the tune up with the original coil packs i paid the 50 bucks that was on the coupon and i left. A couple of days later i took my car to another shop to have the coil packs replaced. Half way through the work the mechanic came to me and said there was a problem, None of your coil packs are burned he said. I looked at the coil packs and sure enough, they all looked fine.
Thats when i relized what had been done at Tune Up Masters, They used burned coil packs that were already at there shop to try to get me to buy new ones, Mine were fine the whole time.
I called there main office and eventually got ahold of a manager named frank who was over the san antonio area. He condoned the manager at the shop for charging me double labor and the mark ups on parts and even the storage. He also said he did not believe me about the coil packs!
I have not been back to a Tune Up Masters since and will never go again.
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