Allman Family Auto

Hi everyone, I have waited a couple of weeks to write this review so that I could fairly depict what happened when I took my car into Allman Family Auto. Recently, I had a cylinder misfire on my VW Jetta and was looking around on Yelp to see where I should bring my car. In the mail that same day I received a 10% off coupon for new customers from Allman Family Auto. They were already on my shortlist of where I would get my car repaired, so I decided that since I had a discount, I would go there. So, I took my car into the shop where they charged me a pretty standard fee of around $100 to get my car diagnosed to find the specific root of the problem. After a couple hours, they called me to say that my spark plugs and wires would need to be replaced and that would cost me roughly $500 total. Seemed pretty pricey to me, but I asked for my quote with the 10% off coupon and they told me that they could not honor the coupon. They could not honor the 10% off coupon because I had taken my car into the shop before to get a quote on an Air Conditioning repair over a year ago. They charged me the same fee of $100 to give me an estimate, but I ended up going somewhere else for the AC repair because Allman quoted me a repair fee of $1600 and I ended up getting my AC fixed for $930 (almost half the price). I figured that since they did not repair my car in any way, that would not make me a customer and I would be able to use my "first time customer 10% off coupon" - I guess not. After speaking with Mike Allman, the owner of the shop, he told me that their have been many other people thinking that they can use this coupon themselves but that it is intended to be given to friends and family as a referral source. Obviously this coupon is misleading if "many other people" have made this same mistake. He offered to credit me 10% off of my AC quote from a year back (a value of $10) but that "the money just isn't there to give 10% off my $500 repair (a value of $50). We are talking about a $40 difference here. Come on. After I pushed back, he told me three different times that I "was wrong" or "read the coupon wrong" or some variation of that. Horrible customer service! Isn't the customer always right?? Finally, he budged and gave me the 10% off my current repair but not without claiming that I was "taking advantage of him." I would very strongly argue that Mike Allman of Allman Family Auto was taking advantage of me! I was so frustrated and wanted to take my car to another mechanic, but if I had left, I would still have had to pay the $100 diagnostic fee - again!! Trapped is the correct adjective for this situation. Very surprised after reading many positive reviews about Mike Allman that he would treat me this way. But nevertheless, his coupon mailers did not gain him new customers as he was hoping too, but rather lost me as a customer for all future repairs and I will tell anyone considering going to this mechanic that they are overpriced and deceptive in their marketing/advertising. (Btw I have a degree in Marketing so its not like I hate all marketing) All in all, my car works but at the expense of a lot of frustration, time, money, and verbal attacks from the owner, Mike Allman. To think they could have had me as a customer for life if they would have just credited me $50 off the bat - the price of an oil change.