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Middleman Blues

Even though I am not a regular contributor to the Fix I thought I might get some help here. I need some transmission work done on my dinosaur 89 f250. There are trany shops all over town. What I need is a good transmission guy who works on his/her own. Yes I wish to pay less than a big trany shop. My thoughts on this are, why should I pay someone other than the person who is doing the work. I have a trade business and I charge 1/3 the goin shop rate. I dont have the overhead of a big shop so I dont need to support as much. Also I am sick of middlemen living off the work of everyone else...........SO if anyone knows a trany guy....um transmission guy I would be grateful

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Permalink Reply by L. C. Sterling on November 8, 2012 at 4:43pm

I recommend: http://albuquerque.citysearch.com/profile/6947869/albuquerque_nm/ke...

Very honest guy. How do I know? He carefully explained why our problem wasn't the transmission and sent us on our way.

By comparison, I heard of a national muffler chain telling a woman that her brakes were bad and charging her $500. Doesn't sound that terrible, right? Well, the car was new and under warranty.

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Permalink Reply by Kenny on November 9, 2012 at 7:49am

The last time I needed work done on my transmission I asked a couple specialty shops who they used when their customers needed transmission work and was told about United Transmission. It's a shop, not a single person working out of the home but they are a small, locally owned shop with just the one location at 2116 Claremont NE. They did the work, charged a reasonable price (not cheap but they didn't try to gouge me either) and I got my vehicle back with a transmission that performed better than when the vehicle was brand new. I'm happy and United can count on me for a positive recommendation.

Stay away from the national chains. The employee turnover in those places is horrendous because they don't pay well. They have a constant supply of new customers due to the "name brand" and the national advertising. That means they don't have to depend on providing excellent service in order to generate happy customers who provide repeat business.

Being local is no guarantee that the company will do good work and treat you right but your chances are better than with the national chains.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Da Bomb on November 11, 2012 at 11:36am

United Transmission came highly recommended when my transmission went out on my Dodge Dakota. I felt they were honest and explained exactly what they did. They gave me an estimated range of prices, since they didn't know the extent of the rebuild until they got into it, and the final bill came out near the middle. Guaranteed their work for a year, and the truck has been running great for about 80,000 miles since the rebuild. Oh, and towing was included. I know this is 180 degrees from what you are looking for, but I thought my experience was somewhat relevant for folks looking at all the alternatives for transmission work...

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Permalink Reply by Lebowski on November 9, 2012 at 4:27pm

Wise that you clarified Tranny vs. Transmission guy. I was about to give you an interesting referral.

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Permalink Reply by Susana of NMWeddingBlog.com on November 9, 2012 at 4:41pm

I know someone who could help. We just had some work done on our car and I wish we would have known our friend could do it for a lot less. He's an engineer for a living, but has done his own transmission, etc. If you want his number, send me an email. Good Luck either way!

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Permalink Reply by Joe on November 10, 2012 at 7:12am

while my post is a year old I do thank everyone for the input. Have a great weekend all.

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Permalink Reply by L. C. Sterling on November 10, 2012 at 9:30am

I guess I started this year-old ball running. Here's how it happened. I tried to reply to your Soylent Green post and clicking "Add Reply" didn't work.

So I clicked on your profile to see what else was out there so that I try to get a message to you.

Nothing worked.

I had a rather lengthy reply about the evils of cooking meat in microwave ovens, etc., and how The Range, an otherwise very good place, wrecks their basics, such as Tom's Meatloaf.

Anyway, nothing was clickable.

This went on for a few days and the new owners of DCF never seemed to notice -- P.S. trying to send them a message was equally unclickable.

So I gave up, but saved my message to you on this tranny question.

As soon as DCF seemed to be working again, I clicked "Add Reply."

I'm sorry for starting a year-old discussion that must clearly no longer have had value.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Da Bomb on November 11, 2012 at 11:40am

Hey L.C., I disagree about the "no longer have had value." The beauty of this format is that old discussions can be brought back to life from time to time with current relevance. I do love your story about how you were responsible for resuscitating this thread, though! I am curious...Did you ever get to post your comments about The Range? Gonna have to check out the other thread to find out!