Complaint Review: HONEST-1 AUTO CARE

Ok Clarksville, in reference to my post a couple of weeks ago, regarding HONEST-1 AUTO CARE on Wilma Rudolph, we now have the rest of the story and , as promised, my final review. It's a little long but I guarantee it's worth your time so you're able to steer clear of the same issues I dealt with.

The owners statement, that I'll provide , in regards to how they bill labor will be eye opening and surprising. For reference, their hourly rate is around $106 an hour. You must ask what the hourly rate is because it isn't clear on the estimate. A business may charge whatever they want but this rate is as high as any I've seen. A consumer has the right to go elsewhere so I defend a businesses right to charge whatever they feel like charging, as long as it's disclosed, up front.

To bring others up to speed on everything that transpired, I took a 2007 Lexus GS 350 to them a couple of weeks ago for diagnosis on a couple of issues. I paid the $150, plus tax, diagnosis fee (this was known upfront and I have no problem with the fee) and was given an estimate of repairs totaling nearly $4000. The estimate was emailed to me before I picked the vehicle back up and I was immediately suspicious because of the number of hours of labor involved and a couple of the repairs diagnosed.

So, I have family in the auto repair business that are several hours away in another state and I sent the estimate to them. They plugged everything in their system exactly as the estimate , from Mike Rhodes at Honest-1 , had put in the estimate. Their conclusion was that they couldn't figure out how Mike Rhodes, at HONEST-1, had come up with around 19 hours of labor for the same repairs that their system showed around 8.5 hours, for. It became clear that something wasn't right.

I went and paid the diagnosis fee and asked Mike if he'd put the vehicle back up on the rack and let me hear, and see, if there was play in the 2 rear hubs that he claimed needed replacing. He immediately balked and said there really wasn't any play in the hubs but just noise coming from them that let them know they were bad.

I was suspicious because both wheel bearings (hub assemblies) don't normally go bad at the same time or near the same time. It's typically only 1 that goes bad and needs replacement. I know that normally a technician is the one that does the diagnosis and the manager writes the estimate based on the technicians diagnosis. I asked Mike, since he was adamant I didn't need to look at the vehicle, if he did the diagnosis himself and he said that he did. So, he said he diagnosed and wrote the estimate. I doubted this was true but knew, at this point, that I wouldn't be allowing them to repair the vehicle so I didn't press the issue.

I then asked Mike to step outside with me and he did so. I told him I was giving him one opportunity to tell the truth about the number of hours that he claimed the repairs would take. He said it's just what the system said it took. I asked him what system they used and he said Mitchell Pro, which is exactly the same system my family uses. I informed him of this and he still stuck to his story. I then confronted him about one of the other services recommended in the estimate, a coolant system flush. One of the repairs that he said needed to be made, was a whole new radiator.

If you're replacing the radiator you are losing most of the coolant, anyway, and definitely wouldn't need a coolant flush. When confronted with this fact, he immediately said that was his mistake and it shouldn't be on there. I gave him one more chance to come clean about the hours and told him if he just told the truth I'd leave and he'd never hear from me again. If not, I'd review the business on every site available. He stuck to his story and I left.

I gave an initial review, that night, on this site and on Honest-1's website. There were several people who commented and I promised a final review once I had the vehicle repaired and confirmed some of my other suspicions about only one wheel bearing being bad as well as one of the other services that were recommended. Mike claimed, on the estimate, that there was a little metal in the rear differential, but he didn't think it was so bad that it needed repairing. He recommended just changing the differential fluid. I suspected he was adding this because it was easy money since they'd already be replacing both hubs and rear brakes. I'd know the whole truth once it was repaired by someone else.

After the initial review I recieved an email from Mike , essentially trying to shame me for putting 8 HONEST employees in jeopardy by posting the review. I responded that he'd done that himself with, what I felt, was a dishonest estimate and over billing for hours of labor required for the job. I also recieved a message from the owner , Tucker, that he'd like to talk to me, and make things right. I emailed Tucker back and told him I wouldn't post any other reviews until I'd had the vehicle repaired and I'd spoken with him

I've now had the vehicle repaired and it was definitely confirmed that, of the two hub assemblies, only the drivers side hub assembly needed replacing. It is also confirmed that there were NO metal shavings in the rear differential but we serviced it anyway. All other repairs on the estimate were correct and were made and we also added front brakes to the other repairs as they would need replacing soon, also. The shop that did the repairs billed around 10 total hours for everything, including the added front brake job. So they did everything in the original estimate, minus the passenger wheel hub , and added front brakes , in about 9 hours less than HONEST-1 AUTO CARE estimate called for. If the shop owner wants to confirm any of this I welcome him to chime in or anyone looking for a true HONEST shop can message me and I'll give you his info. I'd never met him before this ordeal but he's earned my family's business.

So, after the repairs were made, I called Tucker. He was out of the office for a few days and finally called me back this past Friday. I laid it all out for him, expecting that he possibly didn't know what his manager , Mike Rhodes, had been doing. That wasn't the case. From my conversation with Tucker, I believe he has little, or no, experience in the auto repair business, which isn't necessarily a problem if you have knowledgeable, honest, management to run the day to day operation. Given my experience, this doesn't seem likely.

Tucker would only say they aren't perfect and got some things wrong but he was insistent that the hours of labor were correct, according to Mitchell Pro. He wouldn't concede that the diagnosis of both hubs being bad , the recommended coolant flush nor the rear differential diagnosis were dishonest. He'd only concede that they might have made some mistakes.

It's my contention that at $106 an hour you shouldn't get that much wrong. Especially things as simple to diagnose as rear wheel hubs and metal in the rear differential. That metal does not dissapear and would be an indication of a bigger issue and definitely would have been seen by the repair shop I used. It was clean and no issues detected.

Tucker said the program they use to know how many hours of labor to bill, is Mitchell Pro. He said that program is only a guide and not set in stone. He is correct on that. I have been around the auto repair industry for several years and am familiar with how estimates work. These programs will, sometimes, stack labor. For instance, the program may call for 2.5 hours of labor to replace a hub assembly and 1 hour of labor for rear brakes. If a shop is repairing both, they know they'll save some time on the rear brakes since they will already have it apart for the hub assembly. So instead of 3.5 hours of labor they might back out the extra half hour and only charge 3 hours. Most do this but not all. Some shops will bill every hour of time the system calls for and I wouldn't even call that dishonest if they admit it when asked.

What I've never seen and what was truly shocking is the admission from Tucker, the owner of HONEST-1 AUTO CARE, on Wilma Rudolph, that I alluded to at the start of this post. He said that on some jobs he needed to bill more than what the Mitchell Pro estimator called for so that he could pay his technicians. I promise I'm not making this up. He actually said he needed to bill more than standard so that he could pay the technician. The $106 an hour isn't enough, according to him. He even gave this example. He said that Mitchell Pro calls for an hour of labor on front brakes but he gives a 3 year 36k mile warranty on brakes so he bills 2 hours of labor so he can pay his technicians more.

Again, that's what he told me. I'm not making it up. The above statement is one of the reasons I think he has no real experience in the industry because I don't know a single experienced owner , or technician, that would admit that. I truly think Tucker believes that is okay and has been told that's how it's done. He didn't say it like he thought it was dishonest. Never mind that an experienced tech can knock out a front brake job in about 30 minutes.

So, if you want to pay more for your auto repairs and be charged more labor than other shops charge, plus be told you need repairs you don't need, take it to Honest-1 Auto Care on Wilma Rudolph, and ask for Mike Rhodes. He can get that job, done.