Quality Coaches, Incorporated

I so wanted to give them a rave review. But in good conscience I can’t. Why I wanted to – Mark, the owner, has done an admirable thing, create a thriving small business catering to classic car owners. He followed his passion and has been doing his thing now for 30 years. By all accounts he has a loyal and passionate customer base. And from what I saw he treats his workers well and employs good talent. I’m embarrassed to say I own 7 classic cars, so was excited to bring my 61 sunbeam alpine in for some brake work, with plans to bring in the rest. Up front I should say that delays and cost overruns are more common when working on the oldies, and I’m used to them. The estimate Mark gave me was $600. While on vacation about 3 weeks after dropping the car off – 3 weeks without any communication - I got a call from Mark asking for an ASAP payment of $1500 due to more serious issues they’d found. He said he didn’t think the total would be much more than that, so I paid and they carried on. $1500 still seemed reasonable enough for brake repairs on a car like that. No communication until two days’ ago, over 6 weeks into the work, when Mark left me a message saying they’d finished the original brake work and that he’d started in on some unrequested electrical work. Turned out the total for the initial work was $3200, 5 times the original estimate! And with no communication in between other than to say it would be closer to $1500. Aside from that, starting in on unrequested work, whether I needed it or not, is just plain dishonest and a classic way of running up a bill since it put me in the position of being the bad guy and calling back asap to say what the heck, you gotta stop! It would be like if a lawyer you hired to set up a company for you then started drafting your will without asking because he thought you needed one. Plus after the initial 5x overrun, I couldn’t trust the price he quoted me for the additional work. I patronize mechanics who know how to communicate and are up front about costs. In my experience, this place just isn’t one of them, and that's a disappointment. So much of a mechanic’s work – the markup on parts and the amount of time they spend on labor – is on the honor system since customer’s have no way of verifying. Maybe I was just unlucky – some review are the opposite of mine and 30 years in business is a testament to doing things right at least some of the time. As far as I can tell, the work that was done is good – it just cost a barrel of gold. If Mark were providing a premium service at a premium price and was up front about that I wouldn’t complain. But $3200 for brake work, even on a car like mine, is a lot. (He shaved off a bit when I got vocal – about $100.) Plus the lack of communication about how much it would really be. The real deal killer for me was undertaking new work I didn’t request without my ok.