I don't know if I'm actually writing a review for ""Dave's Auto Glass Shop"" in Alameda, although I've made absolutely sure that is the number I dialed this morning: (510) 250-3945. The very hard to understand man who answered told me his driver would be at my place in Alameda between 11:30 and 12:30 today to replace my passenger door window that got broken in Oakland yesterday in a smash & grab - Great! I thought.
The kid that showed up around 1:00 PM could barely speak english, but that's not the problem, it merely exacerbated things trying to communicate with him when everything went south.
He said it would take ""an hour"". After more than an hour, I went to check and he had managed to completely disassemble my door and vacuum out the remaining broken glass (I'd already gotten most of it myself last night and effected a field repair involving Gorilla Tape and the sacrifice of the plastic from an old poster frame...) It was at this point he had figured out that he'd arrived with the wrong window - driver's side though I had been very clear on the phone which door it was. He said he had to go back to Oakland to pick up the correct window, and would be back ""in 10 minutes"". Yeah, right. He was back 35 minutes later at which point I had already researched my other options and selected the place I should have called first, Auto Glass On The Move (glassonthemove dot com)
But I gave the benefit of my remaining doubt and allowed him to continue. After the better part of yet another hour, at which point I was late for something, I came out to load stuff into the car and found him still mucking around trying to figure out which hardware went in which hole at the bottom of the glass. I stood there and watched him undo and re-do several fittings 3 times and at that point I had had it. I said something to the effect of, ""I'm sorry that you've lost hours of your day here, but so have I. It is obvious that you have no idea how to do that correctly and I'm not going to allow you to learn on my car. Please remove all of my hardware from the glass, leave it on the floor of the car, take the window and your tools and leave. Sorry and thanks.""
To top it all off, the truck that arrived was labeled on the doors with the name of ""Power Auto Glass (dot)net"" (spelled like that, with spaces.) powerautoglass(dot)net is currently down - returning a 403 error. What a surprise. They are also apparently located somewhere in South SF - not exactly the local shop I thought I was patronizing.
What a joke and a complete waste of a nice Saturday afternoon.
Now, maybe that wasn't actually Dave's Auto Glass Shop located on Mariner Square Drive in Alameda. Maybe Dave takes weekends off and his phone forwards to this crappy-ass outfit in South SF, or goes into some kind of random phone bank where you get to roll the dice and find whichever shop happens to be open on a weekend.
All I know is, I will never be dialing that number again nor recommending anyone else to do so.
The gentleman (Felix) who answered the phone at Glass On The Move knew exactly what the deal was with my tricky (Subaru) power window and wasn't at all surprised at the situation. Apparently it happens all the time; the Bay Area is full of lousy mobile glass installers. Maybe your experience is different with a Windshield than a power door window, but I don't care. Today sucked. Save yourself my nightmare and keep looking. I'd suggest looking at the reviews on Yelp, although you have to take those with a grain of salt, I find it more than curious that Glass On The Move has 5 stars with 65 reviews, and I can't even find ""Dave's Auto Glass Shop"" on there. I should have had my second cup of coffee before picking up the phone this morning.
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