Mobile Mechanics Of America

We had already diagnosed a bad alternator on our 2000 Discovery Motorhome with a Cummins 275 engine. We called Mobile Mechanics to come and change it out for us. They advertised a «free service call» but then said the call is free only if they do the repair. When the repair tech, Pat, arrived, he wanted $ 125 cash upfront before he would look at the RV. We were told this would then go towards the repair. We paid the $ 125. Pat seemed fairly clueless as to how to even diagnose the alternator was the problem, but after a couple calls back and forth to «Steve» he came and told us that yes, it was a bad alternator.
He then quoted the repair at an additional $ 1360.00, AFTER the $ 125 we had already paid. When we asked for a breakdown, we were told it would be $ 900 for the part, and approximately 5 hours for the repair. We had already been told that the repair should take about 2 hours, so we questioned the 3 hours. We were told that 2 hours of the charge was to go and pick up the part from the Cummins dealer (which is 30 minutes away). We said for that price, we would go pick up the part. We were told that was «not allowed». Now being suspicious, we called a local Freightliner dealer to get a price on the alternator. We were then told the alternator was only $ 230.00.
We elected NOT to have the repair done by Mobile Mechanics, and feeling we had been scammed, asked for our $ 125.00 back. Not only could we not get the money back, we were not even given a receipt for the cash. After the repairman left, with our $ 125, I called back «Steve» and questioned why were were quoted $ 900 for a $ 230 part. He tried to say that was just a «ballpark». I gave him another chance to return our $ 125.00 but he refused.