Hambletonian Auto Spa — Attraction in Town of Chester

I have been coming here for a few years to get my car washes and oil changes, and haven’t had any issues up until now. I drove 40 minutes away to come here because of how trustworthy and reliable they were when I lived in Chester. I brought my car in because rain water has been leaking into my trunk. I have a cracked taillight and asked if they could confirm/diagnose if that’s where the leak was coming from, or if it was a different problem. It took two hours of me waiting to go outside to get information on my car because I wasn’t receiving any updates. The worker said my car has been done, so I guess I was just waiting inside for nothing when I had somewhere to be. Another worker came about 10 minutes later to confirm that the leak was in fact coming from the taillight and that they patched it up and set parts of my trunk out in the sun to dry. They charged me $250 for “repairing my taillight” and “drying out my trunk.” My taillight is not repaired and my trunk is still soaking wet. I could have went anywhere else and not have driven 40 minutes to actually get my taillight repaired for the same price, or for much less! Instead I have a wet trunk still and a patched up taillight which I don’t know how long it’ll last. This visit feels like a waste of time and money and I regret coming here because I shouldn’t have been charged $250 for a quick messy patch job and to have my trunk still wet. I also waited for two hours and waited longer than I had to. I will definitely not be a loyal customer here any longer because I will not be returning. I don’t recommend getting any work done here at all because I was definitely charged for something so simple and easy and all I really wanted was...

Don't go here for an inspection unless you want to be failed just because the workers don't know how to use tint reading equipment. They attempted to fail our 8 year old car that has nothing BUT factory-installed windows on it. We went to another shop, and they passed it (because it DOESN'T have tints) just fine. Went back to this one to show them, and they insist they are correct. (They are not.)

The workers at this shop are committing a fundamental error when performing inspections because they're reading their tint meter incorrectly. They're saying the tint meter has to say 70% or higher in order to pass, and said our windshield was just over 30%, but our windows are literally clear, so this makes ZERO sense because if they are saying the tint meter reads the amount of light being BLOCKED, 70% the way they're interpreting it would mean it'd be ridiculously dark-- which ours are NOT. They insist that a car with no visible tint does not pass (again, FACTORY installed windows), despite the clear verbiage on the DMV website AND the obvious misread of their equipment. They are mixing up the idea of 70% light passing through and 70% light blockage and not using any amount of common sense to figure out what they're doing wrong.

Their employees, AND their manager currently on deck, need basic retraining and maybe a primer in humility.

EDITED TO ADD

Interestingly, the owner has responded with the exact excerpt from the DMV code that the workers clearly did not understand. Bottom line: our factory installed windshield allows 70+% of light through. We do not have added tints on the windshield of this 8 year old standard configuration vehicle. These people are either...

BEWARE 24HR GUARANTEE. Car wash made me call the cops on them. I'm no longer allowed to be a customer there, not that I intended to. I cannot recommend this place to anyone. -- So! I got a desperately needed oil change & the included car wash yesterday afternoon. This morning, I needed to make use of the 24hr guarantee. Sign says "upgrade & only pay the difference". So I upgraded to the next one up. Turns out you don't pay your difference, but the difference between their lowest wash and the one you bought. They wanted me to pay $25 instead of $10 I expected. That $15 is literally the difference whether or not I bought new shoes today. You pay after your car goes into the wash so there's no chance to change your service. Being unable to resolve the dispute, the Owner/Manager told me I could call the police, so I did. The officer arrived and I was shocked they let the incredibly gracious officer resolve the dispute by paying for me since the business would not budge. Meanwhile the elderly cashier yelled "SHAME ON YOU" at me repeatedly until they gave me my keys back and I could leave and collect myself. NEVER AGAIN. Edit: as you can see. They just double down. Either you guarantee your work or you don't. Their math makes no sense. Your sign is flawed. It should have never escalated to this. And I've never been spoken to the way your cashier spoke to me. And I'm certainly not the first 1 star review. Shop...