Let me start by saying that I’m a solvent customer of car services. I drive an old GLK that already requires quite a bit of investment. And so, spring is supposedly coming (will it ever actually arrive?), and the air conditioner in the car dies. I decide to get it repaired.
Just to clarify, I have horses that I try to visit every day (anyone in the know understands that horses need daily work), so I need my car every single day.
I call a service shop recommended by friends and make an appointment. I show up on the agreed day and leave the car. I pick it up with the following diagnosis: “We’re not really sure what’s wrong, we’ll need to take the whole thing apart, leave it with us for at least 5 days, and it’ll be 150 BGN for the diagnostics.”
I can’t leave it for that long, so I agree to call them once I’m done with the errands that require the car.
Yesterday, I bring the car back to the guys at the shop. They do the diagnostics again (meaning, they take the car apart) and send me a quote of 2,000 BGN to replace half the air conditioning system. That’s fine, no problem, but then comes the statement:
- If you don’t agree, come pick up the car, no need to pay anything, but please don’t call us again — we won’t take it.
And that’s when I’m completely stunned. Why? How? What for? In Plovdiv, there’s actually huge competition among car repair shops. I left the car with them because the price seemed reasonable and the mechanic seemed like he knew what he was doing — but what kind of terms are these?
Okay, what if I didn’t have the money right now? What if I had some other problem? You wouldn’t take it? Even for diagnostics, which you charge for?
So now, I wake up worrying that they’ll treat the car with the same disregard they showed me.
But I want a different kind of relationship, you know why? Because this car is part of my life. I use it for work-related errands too — without it, even getting around Plovdiv becomes a huge time drain. Not being able to drive means extra expenses. Getting around quickly means spending about 50 BGN a day on taxis. So yes, I worry about the car, and I don’t want those worries to be compounded. I want to leave my car and feel at ease — not deal with all this drama.
When we first moved here, we had a "trusted" car service that ended up just ripping us off. They installed a badly rebuilt alternator, charged us like it was new. Trying to find a better car service through Google reviews turned out to be a challenge — there are tons of them, and the reviews are either outdated or all over the place.
We had to ask around — and finally found one. But again — mixed reviews. The funniest part is that competitors even spread tons of negative stories, which get passed around in chats or private messages.
So in the end, the big question is: how do you find a car service (or any service, really) you can trust? How do you avoid getting lost in a sea of reviews and not fall into the hands of shady providers?
That’s exactly why we came up with SpeedyBook — a convenient search and booking service that helps you not only choose trusted professionals, but also track the quality of services provided.
We truly care about ratings and your feedback on the services you find through us. It’s important to us that our providers get real evaluations — not negativity from competitors who also steal ideas. We’ve paid special attention to the rating system from the start, and we always will.