Merchant's Tire & Auto Center

Excellent customer service! I had a flat tire when i walked out of work today. Most places were closed or about to close but i called them and they still took care of me getting my tired fixed! I will recommend anyone to come here for their care needs! Thank yall so much!

I was on a road trip and needed two tires for one of the cars. Just before I pulled up got a flat in the other car. They helped me out rite away and got me back on the road.

I dodging have problem at this location. Brad was friendly. Make sure you book an appointment or you'll have to wait long.

This place is great if u go in with a bad attitude then expect resistance but Cory the manager will make it right regardless of the problem just give the place a chance...

Good place to have car fixed or buy tires.

Very helpful, excellent customer service!

I work there and we are getting better by the day

Excellent

They did a great job. Found what was causing the tire to go flat, patched it, in a reasonable length of time, checked my oil, and set the timer correctly, so I would not get false readings.

Lifelong visit. It takes eternity for them (45 minutes) to tell us that they can’t put a patch on a tire. The manager was horrible!
Though Alex, the technician, was very helpful (4 stars for his work)

Don’t do business with this company, they do the alignment and balance incorrectly, they don’t want to take responsibility for it,
I got 4 new tires from another company, I brought my car to this place right after there were install, now my tires are gone, because they didn’t do a good gob.

I visit the shop since they offer a guarantee on alignment and balance, they didn’t grant me the coverage. Now I have to buy new tires again in less than a year. Very bad customer service. Please make sure I’d you guys had your tires replace recently or they have done any other services in your car, ask (ASK FOR A RECEIPT). They have a new system and they will tell you that they don’t have records of old customers.

Took my car in to the location at 2720 HILLSBOROUGH RD
DURHAM, NC 27705 for a simple oil change and some new belts less than 48 hours after it passing inspection at another shop in town.

Left with a bill estimate for $700 worth of additional work citing things like a nail in one of my tires, and them telling us that they had no idea how my car had even passed inspection.

Went back to the original shop, they walked me through each tire, no nails to be found. Measured my brakes in front of me showing I easily had another 15k worth of life on them. And machined my rotors for $20 rather than replacing them. They also noted my Power Steering belt that Merchants had replaced was making an odd noise and recommended rather than them charging me to look at it, to return to merchants and ask them to adjust it. It was making a squealing noise way worse than before replacement.

Upon returning to Merchants they actually wanted to charge me for the labor of fixing their own screw up with the power steering belt.

Long story short, they lied about fake problems with my car, made mistakes with the work I did allow them to do, and then tried to charge me more to get them to fix their own mistakes.

This all transpired in less than one weeks time.

This place is a damn racket!

Short version: this place has an honest guy named (I think) Brad facing most of the customers, but (1) some of their techs are terrible and (2) their estimates are so high to the point they just are insulting your intelligence... Long version:

I had a tire patched here. Two days later the tire was flat again. I took it back in. I was told by a good guy working there named Brad who is a hopeful spot for this shop - Brad told me that a tech had incorrectly removed the tire from the rim to patch it, and in doing so, the bead was damaged, so the tire is no longer any good. I felt this was honest of Brad to tell me, because I had no idea what happened. +1. So, I needed a new tire. He said he would see what he could do to help me out. So he said he would call his area manager. Brad called me back and said the manager would allow them to sell me a tire "at cost". That was about $100 or something. I said no ... your shop made the error and it is not right to ask the customer to pay for the shop's mistake. Round and round we went for a day with Brad calling "the manager" more, until they finally agreed to replace with the most similar tire we could find. Brad spent more time to find the best-matching tire he could. I felt Brad was genuine and helpful the whole time, with the exception that he did not intercept the manager's idiotic suggestion of asking the customer to pay for a botched tire patch. Anyway, before going back to pick up the car for the final time, I made a complaint online *specifically* about the manager that Brad talked to. When I went in to pick up the car, a co-worker of Brad's came out and identified himself as the service manager. Call him Sam - I don't remember his name. Sam asked me if I made a complaint on the website. I said yes, a few hours ago. He said their shop had already been called about it, and it was really bad for them to get a complaint made, and Sam told me that if I had a problem I should have asked for a manager. I told him about my conversations with Brad and that Brad *did* talk to a manager. Sam said "well I'm the *service* manager, you should have asked for me" or something to that effect. I told Sam I am not the kind of whiny-ass customer that says to every supervisor I talk to "let me talk to your supervisor!!!" over and over until I'm talking to the CEO. I said Brad had talked to some manager, and if they had two managers and I picked the wrong one to believe and I didn't know about the other one, then that was their problem. Well Sam was not too happy about that.

Next... having previously bought a buy-2-get-2-free oil change package, we were destined for future visits to this particular Merchant's... all went fine, but on the last one, on my Corolla, they put 6 quarts of oil in it.... so by this point I know there are at least a couple techs working there who are still learning how to change a tire and put the correct number of quarts of oil into one of the most common cars on the road. The invoice said 6 units of 5w30 oil, and when I checked the oil at home the next day it was about 1 quart over, and then I took care of it myself rather than risk taking it back there. [NOTE: Do NOT let your car run with that much excess oil. It can be really bad for the engine.]

On the same visit when they dumped way too much oil into my tiny car, they gave my wife a brake job estimate of $545! For a Corolla! I'm not sure what would lead a sane person to estimate $545 for Corolla brakes. Maybe they have a heart surgeon doing the work. Maybe the heart surgeon changed the tire I mentioned earlier. Anyway, they told my wife that the car's brakes were "basically metal on metal" and led her to believe the brakes were so bad they were putting her in danger. My dad and I fixed them a week later and although they did need rotors and pads (and shoes, for the hell of it), the description from Merchant's was way over the top.

This Auto Center is the worst I have EVER been too. My first experience with Merchants was very positive when I lived in the Outer Banks so I decided to take it to this location since I'm now living in Durham. They were AWFUL. I brought in my car originally for an inspection and to re-align my driver door. After calling week after week to check on the progress of my vehicle, they didn't call me until a MONTH later to tell me that they couldn't even do anything about the door. When I picked it up, I was not able to start it, there was no gas, and one of the workers made a joke about driving my car home for the afternoon (which I didn't find funny after the fact). Due to my hatchback being open the battery had died. I asked them to jump me before I left--I didn't make it a mile down the road before my car died again. I had another shop tow it to their place to give me a quote on the replacement of the door, battery, and alternator (that blew a mile down the road after I left). When I was told that I had $850 worth of damages, Merchants offered to take my car and repair all the damages for free.

Once again I trusted them with my vehicle. When I returned a week later, my AC nor my radio was working. I brought it in the next day to have them re-wire everything and now I have 3 fuses missing from my fuse box--resulting in not only a non-working radio BUT nothing on my dashboard (ignition lights and needles) seems to work properly and my cruise control has been disabled.

To say the least, I am EXTREMELY pissed.

Oil change took over two hours without an explanation or apology. The man who helped me check in seemed annoyed with my presence even though I had an appointment. They were quite busy but they didn’t seem to prioritize appointments or value customer service. I will not be back.

They employees were rude and did not seem to care. An oil change took more than an hour, because they forgot to tell me it was done.