Reason for Visit: Service
I recommend this dealer: No
My Review of Charlie Thomas Hyundai:
I have a 2001 Hyundai Tiburon 48000 miles on odometer. I had the car towed into the dealership after the car suddenly started running very ragged with major loss of power. I had the car towed for fear of my safety in attempting to drive it into the dealership myself. I assumed that the car was still under the 5yr bumper-to-bumper warranty and that the issue would be addressed and solved quickly. The service department called me next day to notify me that I needed the spark plugs changed, a new fuel filter, and a fuel injection flush, and that changing the spark plugs alone would cost me $400. It cost me $100 for them to tell me that and give my car back without anything done to it. I wanted to cry "rape"! Fortunately I'm not scared to change my own spark plugs, and thus purchased my own Bose platinum spark plugs, and fuel filter for a total of some $30. I replaced the spark plugs and the car still would not run correctly. I then took the car into a generic quick-lube place that could do the fuel injection flush and change the fuel filter (which were the next "suggestions" the dealer had), which they did, to no improvement in the car's behavior. One of the lube technicians was curious about the car only running on 3 cylinders and asked for permission to look at the spark plugs to which I agreed to let him do telling him that I'd just put new plugs in. 2 minutes into looking at the spark plugs, he isolated and found the problem: a bad spark-plug WIRE (which IS covered under warranty). Evidently the technicians at Charlie Thomas never bothered to open the hood of my car and do any actual work to diagnose any problems with my car, other than plug a computer into the slot under the driver side console. I had to pay $120 to the lube technicians for their work, another $40 for spark-plug wires (not wanting to take my car back to Charlie Thomas and be without it for another X number of days), add the $30 for the spark plugs and fuel filter I purchased on my own, and the $100 "service charge" that I HAD to pay to get my car back from the Charlie Thomas Technicians for "looking" at my car and "running diagnostics", which comes out to be $290, of MY money that I had to pay to fix a problem that was UNDER WARRANTY because the shyster technicians at Charlie Thomas either don't know how, and/or are too lazy to take 5 minutes to actually look under the hood. That $290 was CHRISTMAS MONEY for MY FAMILY! I might feel better if someone were to call and apologize, offer to compensate me for the money I need not have spent at all had they done their jobs and honored the warranty, and changed the spark plug cables instead of trying to shark me out of $400 JUST to change the spark plugs! I'll never do business with Charlie Thomas again. I might buy another Hyundai, maybe, but I'll never trust service from or buy anything from Charlie Thomas again.
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