Pep Boys

Honest staff that won't feed you crap about your car. Tells you what the problem is and offers you multiple options for repair.

GREAT service. (We had car inspections done there when we were buying cars.) For the full story, look for my review on googlemaps.com. I'll just say here that if you need a car inspected, you can't get better service at a better price. (Everyone else = $80-100. Pep Boys = $20)

When I called about a freeze plug to stop a leak, the customer service rep said, "I don't see it in the parts listing. The best thing is for you to come down." I said no, it wasn't, because my vehicle is leaking antifreeze, and it would be a waste if they didn't have it. So finally he actually checked, and told me the vehicle-specific part was $10.99, and a universal substitute was $2.99.

He kept encouraging me to pay their service dept. to install it. I told them I am very short on money and it's easy to install (It's a plug you just push in a hole). He still kept encouraging paid install.

He also kept saying that if I kept calling places and found a better price, he'd match it plus 5%.

The next place I called (Autozone) actually looked up the part right off, and had the vehicle-specific part for 99 cents.

It seemed Pep Boys wanted to do as little work as possible on phone, didn't care if it ended up not being helpful to come in, and wanted to get away with overcharging me for a part unless I was savvy enough to check prices elsewhere--and then thought they could still salvage the sale by offering me a 'discount' at that point. Plus wanted to boost sales volume in their service department regardless of customer not really needing service.

I will not contact them again. If you do so, do it aware of the potential negatives, which I consider serious ones.