Frequently Asked Questions

This would be a long FAQ page if we listed everything. Give us a call at 480-201-0740 during business hours. We’ll do our best to give you a rough estimate over the phone if that is all that you want. Proving a quote over the phone will require the VIN (vehicle identification number). Phone quotes are not as accurate as the quotes given after an affordable inspection. For best accuracy bring the vehicle in for an inspection. Please do not request quotes via email.

Naming every possible sign or symptom that vehicles could show would be unpractical here. Feel free to give us a call at 480-201-0740 and we’ll answer any questions that you have about your vehicle. Also all of our service pages list the different signs of system failures or part failures. See Auto Repairs.

Any towing company can tow your vehicle to the shop. There might be one recommended by your roadside service if you have it. Roadside service is often included with car insurance and/or as a perk with your credit card. Here is a towing company if you need one:

Onager Towing
(480) 203-2434
www.onagertowing.com

If the problem is with your battery, then you could potentially jump start it to drive it to the shop. See How To Jump A Dead Battery. (There are special considerations with diesel and hybrid vehicles so be sure to follow instructions correctly).

If you drive a manual transmission you could potentially push start the vehicle if you have another person to help. Put the car in 2nd gear, turn the key to the on position, press down on the clutch pedal, with the clutch down let the person helping push the vehicle, with the vehicle rolling forward let up on the clutch pedal, as the engine starts to turn then give it a little gas. It will jerk a little as it starts.

Our price is good because we maintain a “lean” shop and we pass the savings on to you. We don’t stock parts since we have suppliers that deliver within a matter of minutes. We don’t worry about rent since we own the building we operate in. And most importantly, we don’t pay by commissions and we never try to sell unnecessary repairs.

Our work is high quality since we only hire expert technicians that work efficiently. Sometimes a junior technician could perform some services under the supervision of a master technician. We stand by all our work and if there is ever anything lacking which is missed by accident then let us know and we’ll fix it.

There is always a possibility that a part we install can have a defect that we don’t know about, whether it’s brand new or a used part, whether it’s from the auto manufacturer or after market. This is rare and could happen no matter which shop you go to. If it ever happens at Crawford’s Auto we will replace it for free.

We strive to provide quality you can trust. If you ever feel like you didn’t receive 5-star service then let us know and we’ll do what we can to make it right.

While other shops may like to promote a system like this, we actually have a superior policy. We check each vehicle thoroughly during our inspection whether it needs 10 check points or 100. Sometimes a 40 point inspection just isn’t sufficient and other times it’s overkill. We give each vehicle the best attention we can give it, regardless of how many check points it may require.

The “free” offers aren’t meant to bait and switch you. They’re meant to offer you a risk-free option to find out what is actually wrong with the vehicle, so that you can make an informed decision. After we inspect the vehicle thoroughly, we only present our findings and base our recommendations on the owner’s manual maintenance chart and on experience (depending on the situation). However, we don’t have any hidden fees and we don’t try to add unnecessary services like other shops and dealerships might.

This is entirely different from the advertising of many of our competitor’s . Even the common $15 or $20 oil change coupons that a lot of people might see will end up being $30-$40 or more because of additional fees that weren’t mentioned in the coupon, and that’s only a mild example. It’s not uncommon for competitors to quote 2-3 times the price of our quotes because of their add-ons.

We do general repairs and maintenance for all makes and models, with the following exceptions.

We are not a body shop, which means we don’t do dent repair, paint, repairs to the frame itself (chassis) or repairs after the vehicle has been in an accident. Although we can do electric and body component repairs.

If the windshield or any window glass is broken then use a windshield replacement company. If the window glass is intact, but it won’t go up and down then we can fix that. See electric and body component repairs.

If you have a particular part that is under warranty then it’s best to go to the dealer or shop where you purchased the part or warranty. For example if your vehicle is less than three years old then the transmission should still be under warranty. If you purchased tires with a warranty then you should go to the shop that sold you the tires.

We don’t install car radios.

We don’t do window tinting.

We only repair road-worthy vehicles. That’s quite an extensive range but it also happens to exclude industrial vehicles and machinery. For that we recommend Monnier’s:

Monnier’s Repair – forklifts, pallet jacks, golf cart repair
602-228-9301

We have a fantastic marketing manager that has made it part of our marketing plan to contribute to the community. We hope the education helps multiple individuals in multiple ways, including customers who want to know that they are getting the correct service from expert mechanics.

By the way, we also try to contribute to the community in other ways, especially during year-end holidays with food and toy drives for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Follow us on social media or come back to our blog to see announcements and participate.

Most of the content under Automotive Education, including the Online Beginner’s Guide and the Free Ebook have a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This means you can share the information without changing it and as long as you give the proper credit to the authors. If you have the means to link back to our website, this includes providing an active do-follow hyperlink. You can link directly to the Beginners Guide or the specific article that you’re referring to using appropriate anchor text, but we’d appreciate more a link to our home page with the anchor text “Crawford’s Auto Repair, Chandler AZ”.

The Automotive Education content outline was derived from the Automotive Maintenance Merritt Badge from the Boy Scouts of America, which may also be a good reference.

We haven’t really done in-person classes for a few years now. COVID was one factor that pretty much brought it to an end and it’s even less likely now that we’ve moved into a new place and operations have increased.

It was only ever offered to groups of 15 or more. We’ve had people ask for smaller groups and that’s not something we can accommodate. If you have a group of 15 or more then you can ask and we’ll see.

Even without an in-person class, all the same information that was presented in the classes is the same as the Beginner’s Guide and Videos. You can access it all online any time.

Email is not the best way to communicate with us. The best way is to call us, especially if you’d like a quick quote over the phone. Email is checked often but not nearly as promptly as what we can do for you over the phone.

Once an email is sent on this site, you should see a message confirming that the email was sent successfully. If you received this message and still did not receive a reply, then we sincerely apologize. Please call us at 480-201-0740 so that we get your questions answered and also so that we can inform our webmaster. Please do not request quotes via email.

Yes, they’re real reviews from real customers. Even the reviews that Yelp has filtered are real reviews from real customers. Our ratings and reviews are high across the internet because we offer great service. We make it a habit to ask customers if we’ve performed 5-star service. When they say “yes”, then we ask them to leave us a review. When they say “no” (which is relatively rare), we do what we can to make it right before they leave the shop and before they leave any negative reviews online. We do whatever we can (within reason) to perform the best service at the best price.

We do not pay strangers to leave fake reviews online. As an incentive help our actual customers remember to leave reviews, we have incorporated reviews into our loyalty program, but they can’t be incentivized for each individual review since that would be against most policies for review sites.

Yes, we actually have a quite a few. See Deals & Discounts.