Has anyone ever done business with these guys?
Are they good?
The short story goes:
I am not saying RDM Auto is a bad place, I am just saying I have had a bad experience with them. So much so that I now feel that RDM Auto in Randburg is not a place you want to visit unless you have a lot of money you want to throw around. Also, just be prepared to be treated like the bottom of the barrel simply because you have not been a client "for years".
The long story goes:
My Honda Civic has 4 specific problems that I wanted checked and fixed:
1. The car idles rough and you sometimes cannot feel the change in power when changing gears.
2. There is a rough, scratchy noise when you accelerate.
3. There is hardly any air coming from the air conditioner (as a result, it takes forever to get warm inside the car)
4. There is a squeeky noise coming from the engine when the car is on idle.
I had taken the car for diagnosis a few times and the last guy told me my intake manifold maybe leaking and would need to be checked. And I just figured my air conditioner probably needs re-gassing or something.
That is how I ended up at RDM Auto last week.
The service agent there (Adrian) made me fill in a form where I detailed the problems above just as I have written them, then made me sign some contract of sorts that is, and I quote, "a Consumer Protection Act thing, just to ensure that no work is done on the vehicle unless you have agreed to it". He then told me that worst case, if I decide not to fix my vehicle they would charge me R480 excl. VAT for the diagnostics. I have had diagnostics done on this car before and it has never gone beyond R300 each time, but hey, Im already here so I might as well. Cool. I leave.
I get to work and get a call from Adrian to tell me that they have spent all morning looking into the car and the problem is that it needs the speed sensor replaced and that is what is making the vehicle idle so rough. He tells me that the sensor costs around R3,500 at Honda for only the parts. I gasped and then asked about the rest of the issues. He said that they were prioritizing the issues so they haven't gotten to them yet. So I tell him not to continue because I dont have R6k at the moment.
Adrian then tells me that I am still getting charged R780 for the diagnostics because they had to put the car on the machine and clear error codes. Uhm... okay. Firstly I was told R480 and secondly I was told that nothing would be done without my go-ahead so how did we manage to get to the R780?? Anyway, after raising my concerns, he said he would ask the owner if they could reduce the price to around R550. Before he hung up on this call he told me that they were closing at 4pm today, (not 5pm like it says on their website, Facebook Page and Google Maps). Strange, but fine. He then calls me back about 2 mins later to tell me that the price for the diagnostics is R550 but also that they are now closing at 3pm today - not 4 - and not 5. Mind you, it is now around 12pm, I had just gotten to work in Centurion and I had no transport to take me back to their workshop. So in other words I had to leave work immediately to collect my car. I couldn't leave immediately though because I had a meeting to attend with my boss - and I had made mention of this a few times before I left the workshop.
I called Adrian at about 2:20 to tell him that I had just gotten out of my meeting and I was trying to make my way there with an Uber but I would need at least 30 more mins to get there. He tells me that that's impossible because he is definitely closing at 3PM and if I could not get there by then then I would have to get my car on the Monday. This obviously made very little sense to me; why keep a car you're not going to fix?? Anyway, after much begging and being told that I would be wasting his weekend if he waited for me and whatnot, Adrian told me the best that he could do was to give me the car on Sunday because they would be opening for a client to come get his car. I stopped and tried to make sense of this.
"So you're opening on a Sunday for a client and you cant wait 30 minutes on a week day - during what are normal opening hours for you that you have advertised to clients?" I asked.
And Adrian's reply: "Yeah this guy has been with us for years so I made a special arrangement for him to collect his vehicle, you know".
I was defeated. I didn't even know what to say. I said okay and I hung up.
About 20 mins after that, a friend of mine was leaving work and offered me a lift home. On the way, I told him everything that had happened. He then asked for the number to this business and I gave it to him. He called and told Adrian that we were coming to pick a car up but we couldn't make it at 3pm. Without hesitation Adrian goes "Yeah we are actually extending the time to 3:30 hey". Just like that!
It seems strange to me that knowing how frustrated I was and knowing that I had asked to get there at 3:30, they chose not to let me - the customer - know that the times were extended and I could come get my car.
We drove in at exactly 3:28 and my friend goes: this doesn't look like a place that's about to close. And it really didnt! It then occurred to me that maybe the plan here was not to close, but to inconvenience me. Heaven knows where they would have kept my car or what they would have done to it had my friend not helped me.
Just a bit of history on the speed sensor that these guys says need replacing:
About a month ago I took the car to get all the wheels replaced. While doing the alignment, the guy showed me a sensor that was smashed and hanging from under the car. I then took the car for diagnostics at 2 diff. places and was told it was the speed sensor. This made sense to me as my speedometer was not working and the car would lag at high speeds (later found out this was a result of car entering "safe mode"). So I took the car to JDM Tuning to have the sensor repaired. A brand new sensor was around R2.6k just for parts but the JDM Tuning guys were able to get me a second hand one complete and fitted for R1,400. When I went to pick up the car, Jakes from JDM Tuning showed me the sensor they had taken out of the car and I recognized it as the one I had seen at the wheel replacement place.
So I actually have no idea what these RDM guys were saying about a speed sensor when I specifically asked about a leaking intake manifold. No information on the manifold was given, no info on the rest of the faults that I clearly wrote down; no error codes given... nothing. But they have my R550. So........ yeah, trust these guys at your own peril.
