How to avoid being a victim at the car repair garage

Establish a relationship and find a repair shop you can trust — or risk big problems.

Good old word-of-mouth still is probably the best way to pick a garage, says George Geropoulos, service adviser at Ted's Auto Clinic in northwest Chicago.

With or without a recommendation, check online and find shops in your area that have mechanics with Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) certification.

Shops that rely heavily on a particular neighborhood for their customers will take extra care to make sure people are happy.

Say the mechanic says that grinding noise in your front end signals your brake pads need to be replaced.

Brake pad replacement is almost always accompanied by resurfacing or replacing the rotors, the round things that brake pads grab onto.

[...] get a second opinion, even if the next shop charges you for it, says Ron Montoya, senior consumer advice editor for the Edmunds.com automotive website.

Trotta, whose service makes money by certifying garages and charging them $199 per month to be a recommended shop on the RepairPal site, says the site calculates a fair price for quality repairs done with quality parts.