TROLIO'S AUTO SPECIALIST

I sent the below letter to the shop on July 23. Having had no response, I am posting it here. ___________________________________________________ I called several times hoping that I would have an opportunity to speak with you about my recent experience at your auto body shop. The fact that to this date I have not had that opportunity is the last of a long string of frustrations and disappointments I have had since bringing my car to your shop. I think that as a small business owner, it is important for you to know and understand what my experience has been, and so I am writing this letter instead. I contacted your shop on Saturday, June 22 on the recommendation of a friend who had recently had a good experience working with you. That morning, I spoke to your uncle and told him the problem I was having, and he advised me to bring the car in so he could look at it. I asked if I should bring it in that day or wait until Monday, and he said to bring it in then. When I arrived, he looked the car over, and told me that he’d need to order a part, and that he could not do so until Monday, but that he would order the part immediately and that I’d have the car back by Tuesday evening. I returned Monday morning to drop off the car. The next day, I received a call from your shop: expecting to be told that the job was finished, I was surprised when I was asked to come back to make a half payment of the estimate. I would have been happy to have done when I dropped the car off, if I had been asked at the time, but I was now in the position of needing to return for a third time to make the payment. When I returned to make that payment, I went to retrieve an article from my car, and I was alarmed to find that it was sitting, unlocked, outside the shop, where any passerby could have quickly and easily gained entry to it. Later that week, the shop called to tell me that the car would not be ready until the middle of the following week—a week and day after what your uncle led me to expect—and that the repair would be more costly than initially estimated. And lastly, when I finally picked the car up from your shop—now the fourth trip I had to arrange either via Uber or asking a friend to drive me—I found that my air conditioning was no longer working. While I acknowledge the very real possibility that this was purely coincidental, it marked the latest of a long string of disappointments and frustrations. I wanted to speak with you about these, and tried three times to reach you at the shop. And instead of receiving a phone call from you, I spoke to your uncle, who immediately began arguing with me over the phone. I hope you can therefore appreciate how from start to finish, my entire experience with your body shop has been uniformly unpleasant, why the air conditioning is only one of many things I hoped to discuss with you, and why I would now conclude that you are not at all concerned by the fact that I’ve had these experiences. I am still open to a phone call—my number is [redacted], but you really should know how soured I have become on your business.