Complaint Review: Big Bell Auto Superstore

Took my 2011 Chevy Malibu here for an oil change, both my girlfriend and I did.  When I left and got just a few miles down the road my car completely died.  Called Chris Couch, the mechanic, to come down and find out what was wrong as my car since there was nothing wrong with it before.

Chris and another tech came down to where my car was and started looking at it and said if he could get it back to the shop they would find out what was wrong with the car and fix it.  He said it looked like the starter.  Was super nice, almost too nice. He offered to tow it back to his show at his expense.  My girlfriend showed up at the same time and he immediately asked her to pop her hood, she was having other car issues and he said that he needed the 8th number of her vin to do some additional research. He checked her oil and said he was trying new oil and wanted to see if it still ran red after going through the engine. 

They towed the car back to the shop and later called me and said the code it was giving off was something that was covered by the warranty.  I called the dealership to arrange for the car to be looked at and got back to Chris.  Again, he was super nice and offered to have it towed to the dealership at his expense.

The dealership looked over the car and determined that there was no oil in the engine.  There was oil in the oil pan, but never ran through the engine (probably added after the fact and hence the reason Chris wanted to look at my girlfriends car when she picked me up, he wanted to make sure they put oil in her car)  The dealership had to take my engine apart to diagnose exactly what went wrong.  All the pictures and documents that they have provided prove there was nothing wrong with my starter, that the engine seized because no oil was in the engine and that there was no engine malfunction that caused the oil not to flow through the engine, if there was oil in the car.

I provided this information the Chris and he said he was going to get with the dealership that they were just trying to get money out of him and that he has an account with them that he was going to cancel.  To date, the service adviser, Tony, has had only one conversation with him when he told him what the findings were.   Chris said he was not paying for the damage and denies that they had anything to do with the issue,  it was a car malfunction that happens all the time, he says.