It pays to search for top-quality auto shop

When your car breaks down or acts up, it’s a major inconvenience — and often a major expense. That’s why finding a good repair shop is so important.

Unfortunately, nonprofit Bay Area Checkbook and Checkbook.org found that many repair shops disappoint their customers; they do lousy work, impose long delays, sell unnecessary repairs, give inaccurate estimates. But not all shops are lemons: Plenty almost always perform top-quality work quickly and for a fair price.

Checkbook’s evaluations of 479 shops in the Bay area include ratings for quality and price. Checkbook’s ratings are based on more than 23,000 ratings it collected by surveying area consumers; a review of consumer-agency complaint records; more than 1,900 price checks by its undercover shoppers; and other sources.

Fortunately, there are a lot of top-quality auto repair shops in the area. Many were rated “superior” for overall quality by 90% or more of their surveyed customers. But there are also shops you’ll want to steer clear of: Dozens of the businesses Checkbook evaluated got such favorable ratings from fewer than 60% of their surveyed customers.

Checkbook’s ratings of area shops include a separate rating for price, derived from price quotes collected by its undercover shoppers for several carefully constructed repair jobs. You want to be sure a shop charges fair prices before you bring in your car because, like with most repair work, it is difficult to shop for price before you know exactly what needs to be done.

Checkbook’s undercover shoppers found dramatic shop-to-shop price differences. For example, to replace the water pump for a 2014 Ford Escape, they found prices ranging from $208 to $598 among area shops. Hourly labor rates range from $65 to $195.

If you know what repairs you need, you can compare prices from shop to shop on...