Valvoline Instant Oil Change

This was in the spring (May 2025), but I realized it was a bad enough experience that we're going somewhere else now, and that's worth communicating. I went here for my oil changes for a few years. Folks are friendly. It's efficient and convenient. There's usually coupons. The last time, I said yes to the rear differential. Which was a mistake. Suddenly things were taking longer, and then a manager came out. The person who screwed it back together tightened the screw so tightly that it cracked the container and the car was no longer safe to drive and needed to go to a different shop. All told I felt pretty chill about this at the moment. Mistakes happen. I have a flexible work schedule. They appear to be making it right. What they did right: they drove me to the Enterprise up the road and rented me a car for a week (ending on a Friday morning for a holiday weekend). Told me it was going to X shop and should take less than that week. Manager I worked with was gracious and apologetic and I thought communicative initially. What they did wrong, aside from the initial error: Completely dropped the ball on communicating afterwards. Come Thursday morning, it's been a week since my oil change and rear differential. I have not heard anything since Monday or Tuesday about my car, which was supposed to be fixed by Thursday. I can't reach anyone at Valvoline that knows anything, and no one is calling me back with an update on the car. So eventually, I call the mechanic's shop that they said the car was at directly, thinking I'll circumvent the middle man given the difficulties getting info out of them. The mechanic tells me that he did see my car for a quote, but that service was refused so he doesn't have my car. So now we're less than 24 hours from this car rental ending and I'm supposed to leave town Friday evening in my car for the holiday weekend. And I have no. Idea. Where. My. Car. Is. Or when (or if?) I'm getting it back. Or how or if I have to extend the car rental that is not in my name but in the shop's name (or their insurance). Eventually, after calling Valvoline back and using what my spouse calls my scary lawyer voice explaining the situation, someone calls me back. The car is at a different shop, and they were able to give me a name. They don't know when it'll be done, maybe Friday, maybe Saturday, a part had to be ordered so it'll take longer. They confirm it's okay to extend the car rental to include the whole length of the holiday weekend (which required another phone call on my part) so I can still leave town. End result? Fine. But the level of stress caused to me by failing to update me on the location of my car and the changing timeline was completely unnecessary. I still get annoyed writing this up six months later. $119.99 for a terrible and unnecessarily stressful experience. We won't be back.

Friendly and fast