The Shop CT — Local services in Stratford

The Shop CT LLC

There is not enough words in the dictionary or paper for me to write for me how much this place will screw you over.

I sent my car there for for $2000 (their quote) worth of work.

New clutch kit Motor mounts Diagnose why it was getting hotter than usual Diagnose VSS issue

Jimmy calls me to tell me that the head gaskets are bad and the motor needs to come out. I ask him for a quote for the extra work. He says he will send me one. I never get one.

I email him asking for a quote for the extra work. I never get a response to that email.

He later, sends me an email of the motor removed from my car, and then goes radio silent for the next week and a half.

No updates, no nothing. Against his promise of keeping me in the loop throughout the whole process.

I finally get in touch with him and he tells me my car will be ready in a couple of days.

I go to get my car and the dash lights up like a Christmas tree. It was NOT ready.

He keeps the car to figure out why, and still doesn’t tell me how much it’ll cost.

He tells me the car is ready again. I go there and the car seems to be good to go. That’s when he gives me a bill for $12,500. After never giving me any sort of quote. He tells me he spelled my last name wrong in their system so his quotes must not have been going to me.

I leave without my car.

A week passes and I hear nothing.

I call and get told that Jimmy is busy and wouldn’t be able to talk about this until the beginning of the following week.

They do not call me until late Thursday afternoon.

I go down there with the police to get my car back because they are unlawfully holding my property. Jimmy lies through his teeth, tells them I never asked for a quote and that I agreed on the price. The officers were useless at upholding the law, and did nothing of benefit.

I give Jimmy $6000 to give me my car back. I file a complaint through the DMV.

I am called multiple times to be asked to revoke my complaint. I do not revoke my complaint.

The DMV finds The Shop CT LLC in violation of multiple factors of the Motor Vehicle Repair Act, and Jimmy has to give me back $4000 (the difference between what I gave him, and the original quote).

It’s over, right? Wrong.

I have had the car back since October 2024, it is not March 7th 2025.

The car has been out of working order on 3 separate occasions since The Shop CT LLC has worked on it.

First, it had a misfire. I go in to find both drivers side coil packs completely loose. As in - the bolts were not even started. The two on the passengers side were torqued by a man with anger issues I imagine because I have to use a 1/2” drive to get them off.

Second, the car was a no start, to a loss of all power. They didn’t properly tighten down the ground straps to the chassis, so the car would not start. People who know cars also know that this eats alternators.

Thirdly, the heat stops working completely. It didn’t stop immediately. It would work some of the time, and then stop. At one point, it stopped working entirely and very shortly after, the car overheated and popped the used radiator that they put in the car, even though I never had any reason to believe that my stock radiator was faulty.

Now, right before I started writing this, I found that they cross threaded one of the bolts that connect the intercooler to the turbo. So I cannot take my intercooler off to do flush of my heater core.

I can tell you that I got the car back with lug nuts that were not torqued at all, or significantly over torqued.

I still don’t even know the full scale of what they did to my car, and how badly they ruined it.

Do yourself a favor, go literally anywhere else. Protect yourself and your vehicle. These people are complete hacks, or just full blown cons.

Pros -...

If you (futute customer) are reading this and think about going for service CAUTION: tread carefully. I went here a couple of months ago for a tune so I dropped off my car and filed the release form, got a call later saying they did a diag to ensure a proper dyno run and they found out that my wastegate was leaking, my intercooler was leaking and my spark plugs needed gapping, subaru spark plugs are pregapped so you shouldn't gap them but I said whatever. Got there at 5pm hoping that my car was going to be ready but that wasn't my case as I needed an accessport because they don't do open-source tuning (if you read in the reviews you'll see someone who got an open-source tune from these guys) at that point the bill was 1300 to which I thought about leaving the tune for another day since I bought the accessport. To my surprise the next day after driving the car to work, in the afternoon the car wasn't turning on, only cranking, so I decide to check for basic things: fuel and spark. So I disconnect the sending fuel line while cranking, getting fuel, check ignition coil while cranking, getting spark, so I decide to check spark plugs and guess what? Spark plugs were fouled. Gap on the spark plugs was so close they were not making any spark at all. After this I decided to pick up my intercooler to test it and guess what? No leaks on the intercooler... very surprising. At that point I was just thinking to myself: well, I filled the release form and I already paid so there's nothing I can do so I decided to let it go... until today. I'm driving on the highway on my way home when someone pulls up next to me and wants to race (for clarifications yes, I had my car tuned by someone else) so just to please the feller I raced and when I'm done with the race I look at my accessport and BAM! 10psi of boost. I was thinking to myself damn I guess it's time to buy a new turbo, but hold that thought ladies and gentlemen let's make sure and take a look at the turbo. Take a wild guess ladies and gentlemen! Yep! You guessed right! (If you didn't that's fine no worries!) My up pipe had all bolts and nuts loose but I've driven it for so long it now only has one bolt and one nut which was loose btw. So there you go! This is our (talking in plural here cause I'm not the only one) testimonial and review from this place, this goes without mentioning the terrible customer service coming from Jimmy as I am a terrible mechanic and don't know what I'm doing...

Edit- Went today after Lisa called me on Monday to check my car and go over a couple of things, I really appreciate this kind of gesture since normally other places would be like screw that dude. So when I arrived today and brought the car in spoke with Jimmy and Mike I believe(I apologize if I got the name wrong) talked about how they worked on the car, even apologized about the intercooler thing as he might have given me the wrong one which again something I really appreciate. So making long words short: really appreciate the reach out, the explanations and education will be in touch with them once I...

Hello. I wanted to leave my detailed experience with this location for all those coming in the future to be well aware of what they’re getting themselves involved with. I recently finished my STI rally car project I bought. Since it was unfinished, I completed the car but it needed to be tuned due to some changes from the previous owner. Originally I spoke with a woman whom I believe is the owners wife. She had told me that the tune would be $150 to mimic a stock tune on the vehicle. I dropped my car off on a Monday and on their work requested form stated that I wanted the car tuned to as close to stock as possible. The main performance modifications done to the vehicle were a front mount intercooler, TGV deletes, aftermarket divorced downpipe, catback exhaust, inlet tube, mild cams, and aftermarket pistons however I wanted a tune that would reflect the reliability of a stock application for now. On Wednesday I hadn’t heard back so I called to inquire about the status of the car and I spoke to the owner. He told me the car would be done that same day, and that the tune would be $50 more because it was an open source tune to which I agreed without hesitation. I was then told that they had to remove the downpipe to relocate the o2 bung for the wideband because it was too close to the turbo. They also mentioned I had a turbo gasket leaking between the hotside and the up-pipe. They also mentioned I forgot to plug the radiator fans in. Although I did not consent to any of this additional work, I brushed it off since it was already done and I assumed it would only be a few hundred dollars. When I inquired about what the total price would be I was told the owners wife would call me back. I never received a call back. I called the following day, Thursday, and spoke to the owners wife again. I asked for the total price and was told that her husband will get back to me because he is the one who does all the pricing and that he would call me back later in the day, but that the car was done and ready for pick up. I never received a phone call back. I arrived on Friday to pick up the vehicle to a total bill of $2,064.25 which was suspiciously high as the only work I had agreed upon was a tune to bring the car as close to stock drivability as possible. Upon looking at the invoice I found that they charged me $115 for a Grimspeed boost control solenoid (which I did not ask, agree, or consent to), $20 for hose clamps, $40 in misc items, $750 for a dyno tune, and $1000 in labor which on the invoice actually says “customer requests”. I never requested, was consulted, agreed to, or was informed of any services being performed on the car until after they were all completed. Moral of the story is buyers beware, this place is extremely shady. Icing on the cake is that the car also stalls on cold starts when coming off throttle. You’re better off letting your 3 year old tune the car with his fisher-price laptop than letting these clowns...