Mt. Juliet

Great people, great service in about 20-25 minutes

I'll start by saying I grow up working in my family's automotive repair shops and before recently retiring I was a mechanical engineer for 41 years... When I pulled into their service stall. I asked if they could flush out my engines cooling system and I specifically asked if that would include the engine, radiator and the heating system. They said yes and that their "flush machine" would do all of that. I said great and paid them. When they started, I could tell this wasn't going to go well. I had to inform them that my car's radiator wasn't designed to have a traditional cap, just the cap on the overflow tank. That blew their minds, but they still removed all of the plastic shrouding that covers the top of the radiator and didn't find the cap. They pulled off the radiators top inlet hose. Hooked their "flush machine" to only the radiator and sucked out the radiators "water" which took them maybe 2 minutes. (That's all that was in the cooling system because the bottom radiator hose busted on a recent road trip. This caused the loss of all my antifreeze. The system needed to be flushed anyways. So after replacing the hose myself. I simply it filled system with water until I could get it flushed out and new antifreeze put in.) They reconnected the top hose the the radiator and started putting in new antifreeze. I said hold up you didn't flush the engine or the heating system. I was then informed that "they" weren't trained on how to do that and this is how they always do it. I replied, do you not remember what we talked about when I pulled in here before I paid and you started working on my car. They said "yes and I thought this what you meant". My head then spun around like in a cartoon. I told them no, no, no I was very specific when talking with you. An I even questioned you when I saw you and your men fumbling around trying to find the radiator cap that I had already told you it didn't have one like an old traditional radiator has. I asked him if he was the manager and he said no. All the managers from all the stores were in Florida on a Valvoline outing. He got the manager on the phone spoke with him. He came back and told me that this is how they always do it this is what their service includes and nothing else would be done. I told him to finish adding what antifreeze he was going to add to the system (which took less than a minute). I then asked him to check the freeze level of what the system now had after they added their antifreeze. They said they don't normally do that for the customer and that there hydrometer was busted and he didn't know where the new one was at that they had ordered (well if you don't normally do that for the customer why would you even have a high hydrometer then). I told him the freeze level should be at or closely too -35° f with the type of antifreeze they were using which is propylene based (he couldn't tell me what type they use so I had to look that up myself online). He then checked the freeze level with the broken hydrometer which read 0° f to maybe -10° f. I told him that all this was unacceptable and that I would recheck the freeze point when I got home with a refractometer which is what should be used when checking the antifreeze freeze point level. I told him that what they had done was not what I asked for and told what I would be getting and that I wanted a refund. He informed me that when talking to his manager on the phone. He was was told not to give me a refund whatsoever. I then called the corporate number on the receipt and registered a complaint all while still sitting in the stall... This will be the last time I ever pay up front for service of any kind, that was stupid on my part... I will update this review if and when I ever hear back from the corporate office. Or if I don't hear from them in a timely manner...