Justin S.
Yelp
Although I've been going to this Wal-Mart for years without much issue, other than the ridiculous traffic to get out, I had an absolutely terrible experience with the auto service department here recently.
It was that time of year when everyone's battery went out from the heatwave. My battery was no longer holding a charge. I wanted a new battery quickly, without getting my hands dirty or wasting time in the hot sun, so I figured I'd pay the premium to have someone else do what I could have easily done myself, with the tools in my junk drawer.
So I go there because the place looks relatively empty. There are four bays and one car. Turns out I'm actually like 5th in line, because they park cars around the side, to make it look like a short wait, so you won't go somewhere else. I come to find out all the other customers are there for batteries, too. So I'm thinking: 'How long could it possibly take 3 or 4 trained technicians, with the proper tools, to change five batteries?' Like 30-45 minutes, tops, right?
I go in and ask for the best possible battery for my car. It's a nice car, I have money, and I want a proper battery. I think I might have even paid for that. But that's not what they gave me. I see several auto service department employees milling about the garage area. No one is working on anything. I go shopping and come back. Seems like no progress has been made.
After like an hour and a half, maybe even 2 hours of waiting in their crummy little room, they give my car back, and it has the most dinky store brand battery they sell. I was so sick of waiting, I didn't even check it. I just assumed after all that time, they'd actually done the job right.
A few weeks later, my car doesn't start. I pop the hood, to inspect my new battery. For one thing, my car has a battery cover. It consists of plastic shielding fastened to the car frame, with a little plastic porthole you can easily uncover to access the battery. They took the whole piece of shielding off the car, unnecessarily, and didn't re-fasten it with the little plastic clips. The porthole lid for the battery is gone. Wal-Mart bloody lost a piece of my car, and left another piece unfastened.
One of the battery cables was not properly tightened. I tried to tighten it myself, but lacked the right socket or angled ratchet, and could only get it so tight with pliers. This is exactly why I paid someone who had the proper tools to do this for me.
This was also the month my car needed to be inspected. Well, the battery was so small for the space they put it in, with no bracing, that it slid around inside the housing, and kept getting disconnected. This actually cleared the data in my ECU, and prevented my car from passing emissions testing. The car needs constant power to store emissions data, not to mention stereo settings!
I'm a busy guy, and don't have time to deal with dumb stuff like this. So I simply put up with it for awhile. Every now and then, my car wouldn't start, and I was just like: 'Oh, it's that improperly installed battery again', pop the hood, and fiddle with it, until my car would start.
Before I could finally get the battery cable tightened, I got a ticket for expired sticker. After a potentially life-threatening government intervention, I had a moment of clarity about the severity of the problem, so I had a family member with the proper tools tighten the cable up right, and I finally passed. That's literally all that was keeping me from passing inspection on time: Wal-Mart's terrible workmanship. The employees all acted like they hated their jobs, and didn't want to be there. I understand class frustrations, but it's uncool to take that out on an innocent customer.
I'll probably still shop here when I need things they carry, but I feel foolish to have ever trusted my car to this place.