My experience with Sound Connection started off great and quickly deteriorated. I had performed a self-install of a stereo but had two things I wanted fixed: 1) I had trouble getting the backup camera to work - despite verifying that my wiring was correct, I could never get a picture and 2) I wanted to move the USB cable from the glove box where I had routed it to the center console.
When I first contracted the work I was to have done, the man at the counter seemed knowledgeable, friendly, and professional, with the exception of ragging on the technicians at Crutchfield, which in hindsight might have been a red flag. I paid for the services in full in advance, $279, about two weeks before my scheduled install date. Before the day of the install, I'm told it will probably take a couple hours, drop it off at 9am, and expect it done sometime the same day. The store hours were 9 to 6. I heard nothing until 5:30, when I got a call telling me that they had not even looked at my car yet because they deemed someone else's work more important. They said they'd be willing to stay open a little later to finish the install, but quickly backtracked that and said I could either schedule to leave my car with them yet another day in the future or could pick it up in the morning. I opted for the latter because I already had to take one day off work due to having no vehicle available.
When I picked up the car, the backup camera worked, and the USB was routed where I asked. GREAT! The work I asked for was done... except that my steering wheel controls no longer functioned. At all. They worked when I dropped off the car. I went back in to ask the tech if there was some oversight or a problem with the install. His response to me was this:
"Is the backup camera working? Is the USB where you wanted it? Then we did what you paid us to do. We did not guarantee everything would work when you got it back." I was calm. I didn't yell at him. I said it was working when I dropped it off, why would installing the backup camera or moving a USB cable affect the steering wheel controls? He then informed me that they "had to" rewire the entire thing because I "had done it wrong," and that if I wanted them to fix the steering wheel controls they would charge me by the hour to do so.
I left. When I got home, I opened up the dash. I was immediately greeted by the fact that their technician did not reconnect my hazard lights, which is dangerous as well as negligent. I removed the head unit. The tech had wrapped all of the cables, which if the install were done properly would have been great, but it wasn't done properly. I undid all the tape to find that the two cables which the manual for the radio control unit VERY CLEARLY STATES must be connected for steering wheel controls in my Mazda CX-5 to work were left unconnected, despite being bundled in with all the other wires. I also saw that where I had done a very clean job of wiring with heat shrink tubing to cover the connections, their tech had basically just thrown electrical tape on everything.
The technician also left behind some kind of very large socket wrench socket in my glove box, and I cannot fathom what it was used for.
I would honestly ask for the service portion of my install that was related to "installing the head unit" back if I thought there was any chance they would actually give it to me. I have no such optimism based upon my experience thus far. I'm quite tempted to file a credit card charge back since I had to do the work myself in the end, but honestly I'd rather just talk to the owner about what a horrible unprofessional experience I received for my money.
Technically I got what I contracted for - the backup camera works, and the USB cable is where it needs to be. I also got a large headache and extra work I should not have had to do. I would avoid this business at all costs, which is unfortunately difficult in St. Cloud unless you want Best Buy to do your...
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