Firestone Complete Auto Care Store

It went great.  They were very communicative with everything that went on, and were quick to get my truck back to me.

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I've been using Firestone for all of my cars for the past few years. They have always been fair, do a great job, get the work done in a timely manner, and treat me with courtesy.

My husband just went there and checked prices on tires and ended up liking the guys that worked there. He felt like I could go in there by myself to get my oil changed and they're not going to tell me that there is something is wrong with the car.

They are professional and as quick as they can be. If we make an appointment and we come in they will tell us who is ahead of us and how long our wait would have to be. They will ask us if we want to leave it or come another time. They very well give us information and we can make a judgment on what we need to do from that. They treat us well. They count the coupons that they put online. If we have the coupons then we get a better deal and they do it straight out.

I like their contract. They are courteous.

The price is a little high. Their work was great.

last tim

This could easily have cost my daughter's life several days later. What happened was, my daughter and I took her SUV to the Firestone Complete Auto Care Center in Lexington to have the tires rotated and balanced as part of a "Lifetime Tire Re-check/Re-balance" program since we bought the 4 tires there about a year ago.

About an hour or so after leaving the vehicle there, we received a call where they told us that the front end was out of alignment and that the disc-brake rotors and pads needed replacing. In addition, we were told that a seal in the rear axle was busted and leaking rear-axle fluid. They asked permission to replace the seal, refill with rear differential oil, replace the brake rotors and brake pads, as well as align the front end. We were told that the price would be around $800 since they would have to send the axle to a machine shop to have the bearings removed and replaced.

Many of those things sounded like real safety issues, and since my daughter drives this vehicle to and from college--approximately 2 1/2 hours away--I wanted her to be safe on the road, so I gave them permission to do the work. We received another call about an hour later saying that they did not have to send the axle off to the machine shop because the bearings were good. That was good news, as it brought the repair estimate down closer to $600. That was still a lot, but not as bad as $800.

The work went well, we thought, so we picked up the car later that day. With new brakes, the service manager told her to brake gently for a few days to "set" the new brake pads and rotors. That was normal and good advice for a new brake job.

For the next 5 days, she drove the vehicle gently, allowing the brake pads/rotors to set. She told me several times over the next few days how good the steering and the brakes felt. We were both pleased and happy. She had driven only around the Lexington area and not on the highway yet, as it was her Fall Break for a few more days.

On the fifth day (today) she had to drive back to Clemson, where she's a senior--about a 2 1/2-hour drive. I was at work, when about 1 1/2 hours into her drive, I received a call from her. She was crying uncontrollably, almost choking on her words, trying to tell me something. I could not tell what was happening, but I was very scared, knowing that this call was coming from her in the midst of her trip back to Clemson. After a few minutes, she was able to calm down enough to tell me that her brakes had totally failed and that, to avoid running into the back of an 18-wheeler and to avoid running head-on into another car, she had to steer off the road to the right, into a muddy ditch to stop. She said that she had been off the interstate and on a 2-lane road for about 8 or 10 minutes when she came upon a slow-moving 18-wheeler. When she went to gently apply the brakes to slow down, she had no brakes whatsoever. All she could hear was a terrible grinding, metal-on-metal sound like she had never heard before. There was oncoming traffic, so she started using her emergency brake to try to slow down, but still had to run off the road in order to avoid running into the back of the 18-wheeler. It had been raining the night before, so the shoulder and ditches were muddy. She went off the road into the ditch, where she came to a quick stop and got stuck there. The impact of the stop was not enough to deploy the air bag.

To make a long story a bit shorter, once we determined that she was physically okay, we had her car towed on a flat-bed wrecker about 35 or 40 miles to the nearest Firestone Auto Service Center in Anderson, SC. I called the Anderson Firestone service center and talked with the service manager named Scott, in advance of the wrecker's arrival. I told him what had happened. Apparently, the Firestone service centers share computer records, because he was able to look up the service record of the work done by the Lexington Firestone service center. He said he would check out the vehicle when it arrived and do what he could to fix the problem. He also said he would call the service manager in Lexington to discuss with him.

My daughter had a girlfriend from Clemson drive down to Anderson to pick her up, once the wrecker arrived at the Firestone service center. She had to miss her first class today, which concerned her.

The Anderson service manager called me about 6 hours later, around 5:30 p.m. and told me that they were able to fix her car. My understanding of what he told me was that a bolt that held the brake mechanism in place had apparently not been tightened or torqued properly and had fallen out, allowing the whole brake assembly to fall into the back side (inside) of the wheel, rendering the brakes ineffective. He said that must have been the metal-on-metal contact that my daughter heard. He also said that one of the clips that held the brake pads in place on the other wheel was not there as it should've been. He told me that he was able to put in another bolt and torque it correctly and fix the brakes on both sides. He said that he could not find any other damage and that my daughter could come back from Clemson (tomorrow) and pick it up.

This all happened today, as I'm writing this tonight. I'm so thankful that she had the presence of mind to use her emergency brake and to go off the road instead of into the back of the 18-wheeler or into oncoming traffic. I'm also glad there was not a tree or utility pole at the point she went off the road. A loss of brakes in many situations could have been totally disastrous to her and/or others.

I rated the Lexington Firestone Quality and Professionalism as an "F." The Quality is an obvious F, but from a professionalism standpoint, I must say that they were always polite and they shared great concern by phone when this happened today. They looked and acted totally professional, but I can see that the brake-job part of the service work appears to have been anything but.

My daughter will have a friend take her from Clemson to Anderson to pick up her car. Let's hope that all is well with her car when she picks it up tomorrow.