(Turns out there's more than one Bell's Automotive in the area, so this review from two years ago is for how they were two years ago. Here it is in its original form.)
We took hubby's motorcycle here on an insurance claim repair. We live in Long Beach, and the insurance company gave us the option of this place or a shop all the way up in Van Nuys. (As if!)
We will never take anything here for a repair ever again.
It's not that the quality of repair work is bad. Good repair work actually saves these guys from a one star review.
But wow, do these guys need a crash course in efficiency, clear communication, managing expectations, and not wasting their customers' time. I haven't had this much runaround, this many excuses, or this much needless delay from an auto shop in years.
Nearly every deadline they gave us for when the bike would be ready - over the course of the five weeks they had it - was wrong, wrong, wrong, right up to and including when we arrived - at exactly the time they asked us to for our pickup - and no one who knew anything about either taking our money or the actual bike repairs could be found. That was kind of the cherry on top.
We lost count of the times that they said they would call us for an update and didn't. We lost count of the times that - when pressed for an actual timeline that the bike would be fixed in - they shrugged and told us they had no way to predict when the parts would be in, it was totally out of their hands. Of course, by the time they are ACTUALLY honest with us about having no real clue when the parts would come in, and that they are at the mercy of one single OEM supplier for all of it, hubby's motorcycle was in pieces on their shop floor, and they'd thrown away some of the parts already (we didn't find this out until later), so no putting it back together to take somewhere else until the new parts arrive, sorry! So we had to waste an additional 3 weeks without a key commuting vehicle when any other shop in the city could have had these relatively minor repairs turned around in a week, two week tops.
It's a family operation, which should seem heart-warming during this time of mega corporate callousness, until we arrived to pick up the bike. The ONLY person who was there to greet customers - at a time that they themselves scheduled to arrive and knew we were coming - looks like she's dressed for junior high school in a tube top, stretch velvet pants and - I kid you not - flip flops, and doesn't know how to do anything but smile and answer the phone. I'd have forgiven that if the service was good in all other respects. But it so wasn't. After hanging out for a while eventually the patriarch of the operation arrived (I think he's the backbone of the shop, and he seems knowledgeable about car repair). But even he could not find most of our old parts, which during previous phone conversations he indicated he'd be saving for us.
I may, once my annoyance has cooled off, upgrade it to a three star review, for the sole reason that the work itself was good.
This is Southern California. If you're going to keep your customer's vehicle longer than a week, two at the most, they should know the score going in instead of having to wait until they are on the hook with no way to turn back.
