BETTER RATE TRANSMISSIONS

We have a domestic car, co-produced with an Asian car company. It's a fairly common make and model. We were told it would take one week. We were going out of town Christmas Eve last year, which was when our car was promised to be ready. We made arrangements to get around with one car. We live about 30 minutes from Better Rate. When we went to pick up our car Christmas Eve, we were told they would need to keep it another week. They had not called to tell us in advance. We had to change our travel plans at the last minute.When we picked up the car afterward (two weeks after we originally dropped it), they said to drive it for a couple of weeks, come back in, they would check it, and give us our warranty for one year. The engine light came back on and they said it needed more work. To encapsulate this story, it is one year later and our car is still not fixed. The engine light is still on and the car shifts very rough. We have dropped our car for work there numerous times, at least twice for one week each, the other times were usually for two to three days. At first we tried to schedule when we had time off from work. When that was no longer feasible, we went to the expense to rent a car so that my husband and I could both get to work and get our older son to school. (No bus where we are) But now we simply cannot spend any more money on rental cars. One of the most frustrating things about Better Rate is that they will promise the car on a certain day, we will drop it for a couple of days, and when we pick up they have done NO WORK because "the part did not come in." That happened last week again, and this week they promised it would be ready Friday afternoon. We showed up and it had not been touched. They then promised it the next day - surprise, surprise, it was not ready. The owner has now promised it for tomorrow afternoon (Monday), but there is a forecast for very bad weather, so with only one car, our son will probably have to miss school and either my husband or I will have to miss work. If there is anything positive to be said about Better Rate, they have not charged us for the extra work and parts. However, the original agreement was that the car would be fixed for the agreed price. Because of us having to rent cars to get back and forth to work, the price of this has ballooned well above the original $1700 we paid. If we wanted to sell the car and replace it, we can't even do that, because it needs repair! I am so frustrated and feel powerless. From what we can ascertain, this shop has a contract to service cars from a local car dealer, so those come first and we come dead last. If our car is returned to us and is repaired as promised, I will update. I really hope that they will finally return the car with the transmission working well, no engine light on, and give us the promised warranty. Our local mechanic spoke highly of them, so he must have had good experience with them in the past. For us, it has been very bad, a nightmare really.