Avoid at all costs
I took my car to Rick for a second opinion after I was told I needed a new motor. My dad, who lives out of state suggested the second opinion because he thought it sounded like a blown head gasket. So I took it to Rick and told him it was an older car with high mileage and I wasn't sure I wanted to put a lot of money into it if it's something major.
After a couple weeks Rick finally got back to me and said I the only thing wrong with the car was the water pump. This seemed too good to be true, but after bad mouthing the previous mechanic Rick assured me that a new water pump would definitely fix the car. When I attempted to drive it for the first time it wouldn't accelerate. I called Rick and had it towed to his shop the next day.
Weeks went by without hearing anything from him. I called every day, sometimes twice a day, getting no response. Finally, he called and said his father had died. I felt awful about that, I just wish he'd have communicated that. He finally looked it over and told me it needed new spark plugs and coils. I finally picked it up about 3 weeks after dropping it off the second time. Next day, I try driving it to work and all the warning lights are coming on. I called him again, and had it towed back to him...again. This time he says it's a blown head gasket.
By this point I'm frustrated because this is the 3rd time I've taken it to him and now it's something major. When I questioned why he wasn't able to figure that out the first time I brought it in, he got very defensive. He even blamed me, saying I never told him the car had overheated. It was one of the first things I told him. He insists he told me that we would "start with the water pump and go from there." I told him he never said the words "start with." That I would have been concerned by that because I told him up front I didn't want to spend a lot of money repairing it. Then he started accusing me of calling him a liar.
This is where it gets interesting. He then tells me that there is no way he could have known the head gasket was blown. His exact words: "I can not see into the cylinder head to see if a headgasket is bad! No one can." Which is interesting, because by all accounts it's a very simple test to determine a blown headgasket. The next guy said there is no excuse for him not being to determine it was a blown headgasket. So, Rick keeps saying things at this point like, "what do you want me to do?" and "I bent over backwards to help you." This was very strange and unsettling to me. I was a customer who paid him to do a job and he was acting very personal about it, like we're old friends and I'm being ungrateful about his "helping me out."
So, I took it to a new mechanic a friend recommended (Frank's Honest Auto in Peoria, Arizona). They diagnosed the problem by the next day, had wonderful communication and my car up and running like a champ within a week.
I contacted Rick the next day and asked him to send me a copy of my 3 invoices. On them were hand written notes after the fact. On invoice number 2 he wrote at the bottom that the 3rd time I brought it in he did a pressure test and determined a blown head gasket. So I asked him why he didn't do the pressure test the first time considering I told him that the car had overheated. He responds that HE DID do the pressure test the first time around and determined there was no problem with the head gasket at that time. Interesting, because the day before he told me there was no way to determine if a head gasket was blown. And invoice number 1 makes no mention of a pressure test, let alone the results of it. It's only handwritten in after the fact.
When I questioned him on this, that's where he got downright nasty. He began calling me names and being very demeaning. Said I was "ignorant" and "unreasonable."
Bottom line is, I think he knew it was a blown headgasket all along. He knew I didn't want to spend a lot of money so instead he planned to nickel and dime me, hoping in the end I would just end up spending the money since we were in so much already. I wanted to give him the chance to explain, but instead he insulted and demeaned me, and in the end blocked me and told me to "have a nice life." He never once made any attempt to make this right. Not sure if it's women in general Rick has a problem with, or if he saw an older car and someone not mechanically inclined and decided to take advantage. But I would be very wary of doing business with him.
