Harpin’s Tire Shop

My husbands car broke down in North Providence RI. We thought it was his battery and that he just needed a jump start but the people across the street at auto zone came over to help and said it was his starter. They told us that they sold the starter for $ 139 We are not mechanics though and can not do the work so we called AAA and had the car towed to Harpin Tire. We live in Blackstone and had used this mechanic in the past. When we got there they told us the price for the part was $ 300. My husband and I just looked at each other thinking these people were crazy. We told them that we just came from auto zone and they said the part was $ 139. They began to tell us a story about how their part was better. We told them that we didn’t mind having the cheaper part since the car had high milage anyways. So I drove to auto zone and picked up the part which happened to be cheaper at the Woonsocket location for $ 129. The man at the counter was very nice and told me that Harpin Tire was one of their customers and they get there parts from them. So basically they were going to give us the same part but were marking the price of the part to be over 100%. I asked the man at the counter what he thought to be fair labor cost for installing a starter. He said that book time for the install was .9 of an hour and a mechanic usually gets about 60 – 80 an hour so somewhere at about $ 80 would be fair. When we returned from auto zone with the part the mechanic then old us that labor would be $ 180!!! So basically because he wasn’t making the $ 100+ on the part from us he had to stick it to us for labor. We would have gone elsewhere but the car was already towed there and I feel like they new that and took advance of it. Makes me wonder how many times we’ve been ripped off there before. We will be finding a new mechanic for sure!