Waterloo Transmissions

My car wasn’t shifting right, so I had this shop give me an estimate. Tim called me the next day and said that the transmission needed replaced and gave me two estimates, $ 2000 for new and $ 1800 for rebuilt on my 2003 Malibu. I then asked another shop to give me an estimate, and after he looked it over, he immediately noticed that the whole bottom of my car was covered with transmission fluid, he discovered that the transmission lines were rusted through and leaking badly. THE TRANSMISSION DIDN’T EVEN NEED REPLACED. For this other shop to replace the transmission lines, it cost me $ 200. This tells me that Waterloo must not of even looked at the underneath of my car or they would have seen the same thing, or they were trying to cheat me. You decide. As for me, I’m glad I got an honest opinion, and now I have a car that is running like new and I saved a lot of money.

Three out of five stars is the best I can do.
Pros: They really do know their transmissions.
Cons: Tom Millard, the owner, is kind of your frenemy. He is very personable, but his voice is approximately one octave lower than the lowest contrabass voice you have ever heard. Imagine the voice of actor Sam Elliott, run through an effect to make his voice so low that the frequency is barely discernable by the human ear. I have heard, however, that dolphins thousands of miles away do react when Tom opens his mouth.
A day after you drop off your car, Tom will call you and use his profoundly intimidating voice to notify you that the cost of your transmission repair will be twice what you paid for your entire car. At that point, when this happened to me, I found a «Plan B» — I told him I would bring in my own transmission (which I bought used from another place) and I told Tom his technicians could install it for me. Tom reluctantly agreed, and in the subsequent days he got me back by saying that the transmission I got him had problems (it didn’t really) and that I would have to give them extra time to complete the repair. TWO WEEKS LATER, I finally got my car back.
I still paid quite a bit for the repair and I really think ol’ Tom was just making things difficult for me because I didn’t want to buy the transmission from him.