RepairPal

1. Me & my wife went bought a car from carmax, engine fail with in a year NOTE this was not carmax's fault & it was also not lack of oil changes but a defect in the engine build from OEM Hyundai. Fortunately the Hyundai Dealer did fix it for FREE.

2. the warranty limits you on mark up I had on of the warranty company only allow for 1.00 mark up on the part that I would have to warranty for 2 years.

3. the give estimates on repair & I DO NOT know who writes there estimates but any shop that could do it for the estimates the give will never last.

4. they charge you for pre-existing customers. I found on my last bill that they had charged for me coming to MY OWN SHOP & FIXING MY TRUCK THAT I DID NOT BUY FROM THEM! So the will charge for customers you have had for YEARS if at any point in time a person in that house bought a car from them.

For reference at Repair Pal the invoice I'm referring to is *******0923 & the RO ******* that is my truck I was going to put a picture but there are customers information on it.

In closing if you have a good shop you trust or have a shop USE cation & I hope they get this together

This is a pretty cool idea and I would love to give it more stars, but I have to go with my personal estimate and not a random or easy one. In my case I queried the cost of an alternator replacement on an old GMC van, and the site came up with a price of between $263 and $393. And it quoted the cost of the part as $159 - $261. And perhaps that's correct, well let's be fair and say that's probably correct, if I take the vehicle to a repair shop. That in itself is a challenge since the site helpfully offered me 64 pages of possible shops to go to but at least I'm not short on choices.

However, a trip to the local parts store told me that the part costs only $44 from stock, as it's a very common one used in several different vehicles. I could take that to my local shop and they would fit it in an hour for another $80.

I think this is a neat idea and should definitely be one of your sources of information. But I wouldn't rely on it, solely, especially if the repair is a simple one and potentially D. I. Y, or which you can see is an easy one for the repair shop to get at.

I'd like to see a difficulty rating for repairs, indicating whether the average motorist could tackle the work. Obviously such a rating couldn't be any more accurate than any of the other ratings, but it might encourage more people to learn how to do things for themselves. And ultimately, it would be great to select the symptoms and have the site take an educated guess at the problem, too. It's got a lot of potential for development. At the moment I am a bit concerned that repair shops are going to be using this as a guide, so that if it shows my repair will cost $250 and they normally charge $150, they might be tempted to go with the higher figure. Not that there are many shops out there which would dream of doing such a thing, of course.

Asked 500 dollars for emission canister purge valve replacements, it cost me 100 dollar to replace.

The cost estimator seems too expensive. The estimates seemed really high when checking against things that I had repaired on my vehicle. So just to be sure I checked the estimate against something I was familiar with, spark plugs. You can purchase extremely nice spark plugs for $8 to $10 a piece and replacing them is super quick, and a much faster job for an experienced mechanic. The price quoted by repair pal for the 8 spark plugs was $96-$144, I don't know what kind of spark plugs they are using but auto shops usually replace with aftermarket parts and I highly doubt they get the spark plugs for more than $7 to $10 a pop. That is $56 to $80. Then cost for labor is stated at $182 - $233 an experienced mechanic will replace 4 spark plugs in 15 minutes so lets say 30 minutes for the job, that means the mechanic is making $364 to $566 per hour! According to national average labor rate for auto mechanics the hourly rate for an automechanic is $75 to $100 an hour. This puts labor at $50 for the spark plug replacement. In reality this job at a mechanic shop should be no more than $130 that is less than half of the minimum price quoted by repairpal! If I am wrong about this then I would appreciate someone justifying $278 to $377 for spark plug replacement! Don't trust this sites estimater, this site has a lot of potential to do good and help keep mechanic shops honest, but not when their estimator is less honest than the mechanics! AutoMD.com is a much better option then this site. For the same repair it quoted me $235 to have 8 spark plugs replaced at a dealership, and $152 to have them replaced in a shop, this is much more accurate

The below is my yelp review about their certified auto shop - "Alpha and Omega Automotive Repair"(A&O) that fixed my car, I posted my review on 3/14/2018 and updated on 3/18):
I'm so glad I found this trustworthy auto repair shop. Thanks for the yelp reviewers to share their pleasing experience! Also this shop(A&O) is certified by repairpal.com. Actually that's how I found it. Then checked with yelp to see what their customers said about this business. Amazingly, no bad words at all. Nowadays it's extremely hard to gain the full trust from every customer, but they made it, so far. Because of their outstanding credit, I believed them completely. Yesterday I left my Honda Accord in the shop. This afternoon I went to pick my car. Everything was perfect. The oil pan was replaced and the fault A/C worked again. I did a quote at Sears before. Although sears' price for the oil pan replacement of my 2007 Honda Accord was cheaper. I still chose this auto shop because of all the 5-star reviews. I think it's worth paying more to a credible business. Unfortunately lots of business owners don't realize - a good reputation is priceless. Once it's destroyed, it's so hard to do business.
By the way, I made my appointment with A&O via repairpal.com. This website states: they'll give you a guaranteed fair price range for your auto repairs if you go to their certified shops. So I gave them a call to find out why the certified shop charged more than their guaranteed price range. The answer from repair.com: "Yes, our online estimate price range is guaranteed. We will send you a refund of the difference." Wow! A big big surprise! They keep their words precisely. I'm going to use this website to book all my future auto repair appointments. So I don't need to worry about I might get overpriced. Remember, before you go to an auto shop, make sure to ask questions on repairpal.com to find out what your car's problems are and how much it would cost to fix them(repairpal's estimate). Then book your appointments with their certified shops. If anything wrong, call them. Repairpal will solve the issues for you. That's my experience.
In order to get people's attention to read my review, I purposely gave a 4-star to A&O instead of a 5-star because everyone rated as a 5-star except one 4-star. Actually, both repairpal.com and their certified shop A&O got a super 5-star in my heart.
Updated on 3/18/2018: Yesterday I got a small package from repairpal.com. They sent me a blue T-shirt and a handwriting thank-you note plus some small gifts(see the attached photos). I was moved very deeply. What a great company - they care about their customers so much!