Beltway Shell Auto Care

Stopped in here on a rainy Saturday afternoon to pick up a bottle of water and to use the restrooms. The convenience store portion of this Shell is smaller than most.
Restroom access requires getting a key from the cashier. Restroom was reasonably clean.

This is a review of the gas station part. [I had no experience with the auto repair side. They could be good or bad, I do not know.]
I am not saying the gas station is criminal or fraudulent, I am not saying their customer service is horrible, I am not saying there were questionable people loitering around the property. I am saying that:
1. The price advertised on the sign was 3.29 per gallon for regular unleaded and the price at the pump was 3.83 per gallon for regular unleaded,
2. I will avoid this business,
3. The cashier could not speak English,
4. The cashier was not helpful,
5. Shame on this business.

This place deserves a 0. I drove in because I had a flat tire. I put air in it and realized I had a hole in it. I began to change it and a gentleman stopped to help me. The owner came out and told me I had to move my car because I was blocking the air machine. There was an open vacuum/​air machine right next to me that is open. He said that if I didn’t move my car I would have it moved. He said I can’t block how he makes money and I should be grateful he was still letting me use his lot. I am dressed in a suit with my 5 year old in the car on 7:15 in the morning are you serious. Did the man not see the fact that my cane was sitting in the front seat and I have a handicap pass on my dashboard or the military base sticker on my windshield? I was no were near his gas pumps. If the $ 1 machine is how he pays his $ 18,000 a month rent than he has bigger problems. If you value good costumer service and respectful treatment of veterans and the disabled do not go to this gas station for anything. If i ran out of gas I would literally push my car across the street to the two other gas stations.

If I could give 0 stars to this establishment, I would. My car broke down on 270. I had it towed to this service station on Saturday evening. I asked that we get a quote for any work after seeing the service station only had a 1 star review. When I called this morning, the lady who answered the phone said she had called my husband. She hadn’t. She said she couldn’t look at the car until tomorrow «due to appointments.» She then sprung a $ 45 per day storage fee on me. That should have been mentioned when we left the car. She refused to give me a written quote. She gave me several verbal quotes. She said it’d cost $ 140 for them to even look at the car. (It’s a possible timing belt issue which is expensive). When I told her I didn’t want to do business with them because they couldn’t even look at the car today, she was rude. I was rude back. We had the car towed to the Chevron down the street (15 5 star reviews on Unilocal). Our initial quote was $ 300 cheaper, there was no storage fee and they were actually nice.

Terrible service. Just terrible.
First time I went I had an appointment but the guy couldn’t find it so he told me I was wrong. Then their bay was busted which isn’t their fault but it meant my car wasn’t checked out even though it was there all day. The woman told me to come back another time, which I did but I wish I hadn’t. My car didn’t pass the safety inspection because a cracked windshield. Again, not their fault. What killed me was that when I suggested that they could have looked at that the first time, just to be nice the woman got all feisty.
I simply suggested that the day the lift was broken they could have gone out and just looked at the car to see if there was anything obvious that would cause it to fail the inspection. Something they could have seen right away, like a cracked windshield. You know, just to be nice. I was informed over and over that they «weren’t obligated to do that and it’s not the procedure.»
OK, fine. How about you just take my feedback? I even told her, «Look I’m not saying you have to do it, I’m just saying as a customer I would have appreciated it. it’s just feedback, not a demand.» She was still all uppity. Seriously lady, I was a customer. Was. Never again you disorganized bums.

I am trying to write a review for Beltway Car Care, which may or may not be the same place as this– 9475 Georgia Ave (close to beltway, across from Staples on Georgia).
Phone: 301.587.3525
I called on a Monday and inquired about getting a maintenance check up for a car I was interested in buying. I explained that I live in NOVA, but the car/​car owners live in the Silver Spring area. I called to find out if the owner dropped the car off, if I could pay for a maintenance check up via the phone and speak to the mechanic (s) who did the check up and get a report on the car. Kevin, who I spoke with, was extremely friendly and said all of this would be fine, no problem. He recommended I have the owner bring it in early in the morning so they could get her through quickly (she has two kids she would be toting along). The owner was able to bring the car in on Thursday and called to inform me she was on her way to do so. I called to set up payment for the check-​up and received John on the phone– who was really rude to me, and kept repeating that since she brought in the car she would have to pay for it and they couldn’t give me any information about the car. I kept trying to explain the situation, but he wouldn’t let me talk, and just kept repeating himself and when I would try to talk anyway he got upset and told me to stop talking over him. Finally, I was able to say I spoke with Kevin on Monday and he put me on hold (this is after he had called me Mam about 10 times) to ask Kevin if he had spoken to me, and then getting back on the phone to say, owner’s policy is that the person who brings in the car pays and gets the report. So what the hell happened between Monday and Thursday with «owner policies»? I’ll tell you what happened– John was being a total unreasonable jerk who wouldn’t let me talk or work with me, period. How am I supposed to pay for a maintenance check up to the owner and trust what the owner says about the car when the entire point of the check up is for me to get on objective report on the car?! Kevin seemed to understand the travel and ownership/​paying issues and seemed to suggest it would be fine for me to pay via phone and get a 2 minute phone report. All John would do is tell me how my phone conversation was wasting his time, in his words it was something like, «I don’t know why this is such a big deal that I’ve spent this long on the phone for a simple trip check» (i.e., this is a standard 30 minute procedure I shouldn’t have to care about customers or customer service over and I don’t care that you are the one who brought the business to me today or that you were told you could pay for it and get a report via phone, buzz off). Okay, John, thanks for being so friendly and caring about your customers, really. I’ll tell all of my friends in the silver spring area to go to beltway car care so you can brighten their day by being a real jerk. Seriously, is a quick phone briefing on maintenance check up on a car you want to buy that much trouble? If it is, why did Kevin seem to think it was reasonable and why couldn’t John LISTEN or CARE about his customers, ugh that was me, the one who IS paying for the report I have to get 2^nd hand from the OWNER of the car now.