Rating Summary
“DO NOT USE THEM!”
- a car owner
- Pros
- Friendly employees
- Cons
- Too pricey, Don't live up to what they promise
Aastro Transmission —
About 5 months ago our van broke down. We limped it to the closest garage who said it was the transmission that was shot. They recommended we take it to AASTRO Transmission. They said that many people had recommended them and liked them. We did as they recommended even tho we had a mechanic that normally worked on our cars. Now we are VERY sorry we did that.
They advertised that they would check out your car for free. Well, after doing the "free" inspection, they said they had to do a more thorough inspection to find out exactly what was wrong and that would cost $150. We foolishly agreed to that. Once that was done, they said that they had to do an even deeper inspection by taking the whole transmission apart and that would run us about $450 (but we wouldn't have to pay for the $150 from the other one). They assured us that once they did the inspection, whatever it cost to fix the transmission, they would take that amt off. So we agreed to let them do it. Once they did that inspection, we were told that the whole transmission would have to be replaced and it would cost us $3800 to fix. UGH We didn't have that kind of money and they couldn't start the work till we assured them we could pay for it. They said they could store it for free for a few weeks while we found out where we could come up with the money.
Weeks turned into months and they kept assuring us that they would continue to store it for free till we came up with the money. They would not be able to do any kind of payment plan with them. We had trouble with our other van and took it to our usual mechanic. We told him about our van needing the transmission. He said he could do it for about $2000 or so. At about the same time, we got a letter in the mail from Aastro saying that we owed them the $450 plus $1200 in storage fees and if we didn't pay them they were going to sell our van to recoup their losses. We pleaded with them not to do that as we were still financing the van. They said if we paid them $1000 by the end of that week, they would call it even. Luckily my husband got a little inheritance money that week and we had the money to get our van out of Aastros clutches. We then took it to our other mechanic who just finished fixing it for $2k. He is willing to give us pymt arrangements.
PLEASE, if you have to have major work done on your vehicle, SHOP AROUND. In most cases, small businesses can give you better deals then the big chains AND they will work with you because they need your business. I wish we had done that in the first place.
Last edited on Sep 09, 2009
Aastro Transmission
