The experience I had at Leif's is so extreme, I had to write a review for others to see. I took my car into Leif's immediately after a collision and the agent who helped me was friendly, but made me sign at least 1/2 dozen pages of paper work. This should have been a red flag! Not all together in my head after the accident that I was just involved in only few hrs ago, I just signed and assumed it was just typical paperwork with standard legal language to get the estimate process started. When I went home, I decided to look at the reviews and see how others' experience with Leif's had been. Oh my Lord. What a disaster in online reputation! Since I had just left my car with them only few hours ago, I decided to ask for my car back first thing in the morning since the shop was already closed. I called next morning around 9:00am, verified that inspection had not started, then told them I would come to pick up the car instead. When I arrived, Mark tried his best to get me to change my mind and started arguing with me, saying that they have 97% customer satisfaction rating (got to be kidding me!) and that there are two types of customers: 1) those who are loyal to Leif's and 2) those who tried to take advantage of them (paraphrasing here). He is basically saying I'm trying to take advantage of them by wanting my car back without getting serviced by them. He then told me I can get my car back, but will be charged 2 days or storage fee, and other admin fees. This is less than 24 hrs since I dropped off the car, and while they had done NOTHING yet. Obviously not happy after hearing this, I told him that is a bad decision as whatever he is charging me is not enough to account for negative goodwill that will result from me going online and ranting about this bad experience. He left and we agreed to disagree.....then things got really interesting. Leif Hanson himself showed up with Mark. They then started tag teaming me telling me how wonderful his company is and how satisfied their customers are, and on and on, while getting red in the face. I told him I'm being charged $160+ for leaving my car overnight with them, and this is not right. I agreed to pay for the rental car they provided, and was going to say that I'll pay one day storage, but I couldn't get a word in, and they would not budge. So, I decided it is not worth my time or effort and decided to just pay and get the hell out. Up to this point, I was not even going to further waste my time writing up a review, but just let this experience go. I pulled out my credit card, then Mark tells me they only accept cash or cashier's check. Got to be kidding me! Who carries $160 cash or cashier's check in their wallet these days? I then offered to pay for 2% credit card transaction fee and just use my credit card as the shop is no where near a bank. He shook his head and pointed to the fine print. Unbelievable. It is now very obviously he is trying to provoke me and make life difficult for me. Rather than argue and waste more time, I walked out and got cash. The lady at the cashier who took the cash said sorry, and looked as if she was embarrassed for working there. I have never experienced any company going out of their way to inconvenience a customer, the owner included, when their cost was next to nothing and when they had so many chance to practice what they preach in their ads, ""CUSTOMER SERVICE"". I just found an article validating what I just experience isn't unique at Leif's and nothing has changed over many years: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-4988-leifs_auto_body_experience.html \r
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Wow. Best $160 I spent to cut my loss.
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