Complaint Review: Aamco Transmissions - Burlington North Carolina

We needed the transmission rebuilt in our 2000 Chevy Venture in August 2007. Of course Aamco found several other things that needed to be fixed so the total bill was twice the original estimate. We only plan to keep the van thru mid 2009 and so didn't think paying the extra money for extended warranties would be necessary as the original transmission had lasted 186,000 miles and we would definately not put that many more miles on it in 2 years. We took the van back to them about 2 weeks after the repairs were finished because the van still had the same symptoms as before the repairs. They told us everything was fine and to drive it.

I typically put 25K to 35K miles on a vehicle in a year. I have had 2 vehicles available to me for 3 years now so it has cut down considerably on the mileage on the van. That being said, I still put alot of miles on a vehicle in a year and would have paid attention to a mileage limit on the warranty had it been talked about. It wasn't spoken of and so I didn't know anything about a mileage limit on the warranty. I primarily drove my other vehicle from August 2007 to April 15, 2008 when it broke down. I had to drive the van exclusively after that. Between August 2007 and April 2008, I only put about 7,000 miles on the van so I really just wasn't driving it on a daily basis to know if something wasn't quite right with it.

That all changed when I was driving it every day. I started noticing the same symptoms (i.e. shifting hard between gears) and wondered about them but Aamco had told me nothing was abnormal about those symptoms so I decided not to worry about it. The symptoms gradually got worse and I decided that it needed to be checked out again by Aamco before the 12 month warranty ran out. We took the van to Aamco on July 7, 2008. Jeff, the manager at the time, called my husband and told him a bunch of technical stuff. My husband was a mechanic for twenty years and was therefore able to tell Jeff that he only wanted the transmission repaired. Jeff responded that we were looking at an $1800 bill because the warranty was void since we had gone over the mileage limit by 3,000 miles. My husband immediately told Jeff to have the owner call him. That was on July 8, 2008. Today is September 8, 2008 and we haven't heard from the owner, Greg Gentle yet.

Mr. Gentle's wife, Judy, called both my husband and me but was not able to make a final decision on anything. She told me that she would have to check with Aamco Corporation for a final warranty decision to which I responded that I had already called Aamco Corp. and was told that the Aamco in Burlington, NC was independently owned by Mr. Gentle and he woud have the final say in the matter. I would love to hear the final say from Mr. Gentle but he will not call us. Judy also told me we had voided the warranty by driving the van with the problem. My response to that is I only drove the van with those problems because Aamco told me to drive the van with those problems.

I find it disturbing that when I was "technically" under warranty, they told me the problems were not problems and to drive the van. After I am "technically" out of warranty, the problems are now worth $1800 to them. I wish I had spoken to other people who have had dealings with this Aamco before I had dealings with them. You can bet I would have gone another route.

Kelly

Snow Camp, North Carolina

U.S.A.