Steve’s Pit Stop

I’ve taken my ’66 VW Beetle to many, many repair shops in Simi Valley over the 15 years I“ve owned it. Steve’s Ripoff Stop was one of the worst. I dropped it off, telling him that I wanted him to look at why it wasn’t starting. Simple request and I was very respectful. A few days later he tells me he’s so busy and really didn’t have much time to work on it. I said ‘ok, no problem. Take your time with it.’ He calls me a few days later, completely ignoring me, making me wait for over 15 min. before he acknowledges my presence. Finally, he tells me that he ‘fixed the problem and I pay him. A few days later, I went out of town with the car, thinking it was good to go, only to find the same problem: the car won’t start. I’m over 100 miles from home and thank god, I have AAA towing. I get it back to his shop and he tells me that he put in a starter fuse and that it ‘must’ve burned out’. No kidding genius, I found out later from another mechanic that it had a short in the wiring that he didn’t bother with. Probably, because he was ‘so busy’. Steve left me high and dry far away from home. I paid good money for his work and Mr. Moody Steve just doesn’t care about his clients. He charges top dollar but doesn’t deliver. Go somewhere else because this guy, Steve, is a greedy liar. All he cares about is taking your money and not getting the work done.

I’ve been to a lot of air-​cooled Volkswagen shops. Most recently, I had been going to Bela in Burbank, but he’s often very busy and the last time I took my VW bus there I wasn’t 100% pleased with the work he did.
Anyways, my car broke down in Canoga park on the weekend, and Steve’s shop was outside my 7 mile free tow radius, so I made the mistake of going to another shop within the radius that said they’d work on it, but didn’t specialize in Volkswagen. I spent $ 250 dollars there to get the car riding on only two cylinders. He wanted to take the engine out to finish the job, but I decided to take it to an aircooled specialist.
I decided to go to Steve because he was close in Simi Valley. He knew what the problem was immediately after starting the car just by the sound of the engine. He told me up front that if he pulled the engine and started working on it the cost could balloon enormously. $ 1500 to $ 4,000 depending on the damage done, how many parts needed to be ordered, etc.
I was torn, I didn’t have that much money to spend, but it is my daily driver and only vehicle. He could have just left me there, I was very close to telling him to just do it when he said that if he were me, he would just look at the valves and some other things and see if adjusting them would solve most of problems — and he said that would run me around $ 90.
He got the car running on all four cylinders, explained this was just a band aid an that I should keep an eye on it and not go for long drives for now and that more work should probably be done at some point. He told me what I should do to prevent problems like this from happening. He also told me that I shouldn’t use the car as a daily driver… which broke my heart and ultimately hurts his bottom line since I would be seeing him a lot more often if I did.
Steve is a great mechanic. Well spoken, easy to understand, and he honestly tells you what you are getting yourself into. He does not price gouge. He will be working on my bus as long as he has a shop from now on.