Review Title: San Jose Collision Center and Alongi Body Shop Suck [ View All Reviews ]

Let me say this as clearly as possible: San Jose Collision Center and its related auto body shop, Alongi Body Shop, suck. They do rotten work and they do it slowly. I wish my car had never been there. But, alas, it has.

In the winter of 2001, my Honda Civic was hit by a Mack truck. Needless to say, my car needed a lot of work after that - there was no damage to the frame, but a lot of damage on the driver's side. My car insurance company (AAA) had my car towed to San Jose Collision Center / Alongi Body Shop. They worked outrageously slowly, taking over a month to finish the work on my car. When I went to pick up my car, I found out that they still hadn't fixed the seatbelt, which wasn't functioning at all. The car immediately went back into the shop, and they took days to finish the work.

When I finally got my car back and inspected the outside of it, I realized that Alongi had scratched up the paint on the hood of the car sometime while they were "repairing" it and "repainting" the drivers' side. (The hood was completely undamaged in the accident.) I asked them to touch up the paint job on the hood, but after many weeks of chasing them around on the phone I finally gave up.

Here it is, late 2004, and I went out to my car and found that the seatbelt that was damaged in the accident didn't work again. I took it into my favorite auto shop, and they took apart the door to find that Alongi had completely gerry-rigged the inside of the car door and the seatbelt mechanism. My mechanics were horrified by the work. Alongi used the wrong parts to repair the door latches and they didn't do any of the work they should have done to repair the seatbelt. Now I'm left with at least $300 in repairs (for the door latch alone), and it would cost over $1000 to repair the seatbelt properly (which, had it been done properly in the first place, would have been completely covered by my insurance company, and Alongi would have profited from the extra work hours).

My mechanics assumed that, since the work was so badly done, Alongi Body Shop and San Jose Collision Center could not possibly still be in business. However, they certainly appear to be. Do yourself a favor - don't take your car there.