EWING BASS GARAGE & TRANSMISSIONS

"Being a business owner, unfortunately you come to understand that no matter how hard you try, and to what extremes you go, you can not please everyone all of the time. That was apparently the case in this situation. As many cars that we have serviced over the years, we actually remember this customer because of their dissatisfaction at the time of the repair. Replacing head gaskets on a vehicle is one of the most labor intensive jobs you can do on an engine besides replacing the whole engine. When the vehicle came in running hot, we ran the necessary preliminary tests and determined that the gaskets were bad. Until that repair is made, testing anything else to determine if there was a pre-existing condition that caused the problem is not possible. Anytime we perform this job, we make sure to inform the customer of the longevity of the repair, because of not only the labor involved, but the mechanical details that have to be followed. We also have to figure in time to take the cylinder head to a machine shop, at which point we are at their mercy on the timeframe. Once repairs are completed, we take the vehicle on a test drive of at least 20 miles. A vehicle driven only 2 blocks is not going to overheat, even with the cooling fans not working. If the resistor for those cooling fans is intermittently failing, it is possible for the fans to not work and cause the vehicle to overheat, but not in a 2 block distance, and there is nothing we could have done or not done to make a resistor fail. The price of the repair was discussed before any repairs were even attempted, and the final repair bill was actually $500 less than the approximate cost listed. There are a lot of things that can be said about our shop and our employees, but “flippant” and “unprofessional” are not two of them. We strive to be as up front and honest as we can possibly be with everyone that walks through our door. We pride ourselves in educating our customers on the function of their vehicle so that they can make a well-informed decision on their repairs. There are multi-generational families that have been coming to see us since we opened back in the 1950s, which speaks volumes. We are truly sorry for any misunderstandings during the process of this repair, and would have been happy to try to resolve any problems that arose."