Last week I booked my car in for a service with the guys at Tunehouse at Marrickville, I must admit there was a slight degree of uncertainty before going there, having worked in the immediate area for sometime, I had been on the receiving end of some pretty savage rumors about there business practices.
I am going to say that anything bad that I have heard about Tunehouse is a load of SH!T, they are some of the most polite and professional mechanics I have dealt with in a long time and their workshop is kept meticulously clean, you could quite literally eat off the floor.
The service started with dropping the car off for the recommended option, this was referred to as the Tunehouse Plus service, everything is given a good once over, oil changed, other fluids topped up, battery checked, brakes examined etc.
A few times during the course of the day I received calls advising me of procedures that were recommended to be carried out over and above the Plus service, the recommendations for this particular service were to re-torque all the suspension components (with a real torque wrench, not just some idiot going crazy with a rattle gun) and to perform a decarb service on the intake, I was immediately advised of the additional costs involved with these items, and authorised the extra work.
None of these shoddy hidden “extra” charges when you come and collect your car with these guys, everything is above board and the work will not proceed without customer authority.
At the time of collecting my car I received a full 3 page report explaining the procedures carried out as part of the Plus service, the additional service items were also clearly detailed, and there were a few items listed for me to keep an eye on between services, i.e brakes will need replacing soon.
I even got a nice, cut vinyl Tunehouse decal on the rear windscreen (they even asked my permission before fitting it), now I normally make a habit of removing these crappy decals as I see them as a form of cheap advertising (my car is not a bill board), but I have made an exception to this one, it is discreet, tasteful and I have no reason to remove it and am happy to leave it in place as a testament to the quality of service and workmanship these guys offer.
Oh, one last point, referring back to my earlier statement about the re-torquing of the suspension etc, I have not heard one rattle gun in my visits there, this is a good thing, there is nothing worse than having wheel bolts torqued so heavily that you need to jump on the wheel brace to unbolt a wheel in the event of a flat tyre, not to mention the additional stresses on parts that incorrectly torqued bolts can cause.
I recommend that anyone in the Sydney area give these guys a go for your next service, even with my work relocating to the western Sydney area in the near future I will be making the effort to keep using Tunehouse for my future servicing.