I took my 1991 Mazda to Bernie's Automotive and it was a customer's nightmare. I would strongly urge you to take your car anywhere else but here.

I've had my car for 12 years and it's always been extremely reliable. It broke down while I was driving it one day so I had it towed to Bernie's to find out what the problem was. They gave me an estimate of $1250 to fix the car including fuel induction cleaning, a tune up, new spark plugs, battery cables & terminals, etc. Bernie's couldn't tell me exactly what caused the car to break down so I told them I'd need to come in and get a written estimate before I approved the repairs.
* When I went into the shop to look over the written estimate, the manager at Bernie's casually informed me that they had 'disassembled' my car and that they had had someone from the salvage yard come over to look at it to see if the salvage yard was interested in buying it. Bernie's then offered me $200 to sell them my car.
* Shocked to learn that my car was sitting in the service bay dismantled, I told them that I wasn't interested in selling the car and that I had brought it to them to repair...
* At this point the manager upped the offer to $360 to buy the car. Again I told him I wasn't interested in selling and I had no idea where they got that idea. Obviously they mistook me for an idiot if they thought I was going to sell my car for a couple hundred bucks.
* At this point I just wanted my car out of there immediately. I told them to put the car back together and I drove the car to another another repair shop nearby.

The second garage I took it to ran a series of diagnostic tests and they told me the car actually had a blown head gasket. It was going to cost me $2500 to to replace the head gasket so I decided it wasn't worth doing the repairs.

a.) Bernie's Auto mis-diagnosed the problem. If I had left my car there and let them do the work, I would've been out $1250 and it wouldn't have fixed the actual cause of the problem.

b.) Bernie's had no right to dismantle my car and show it to a third party to buy without my knowledge. According to Washington State law, it's ilegal for a repair shop to 'use a customer's vehicle for purposes not related to the repair or diagnosis without the customer's permission.' Would you want a stranger going through your car?

c.) When the second garage tested the fuel in my gas tank to find out why it was running so poorly, they found that someone had put diesel in the car instead of gasoline (which causes the engine to stop running.)I didn't put diesel in my car but it just so happens Bernie's Auto sells diesel on the premises.

There's several reputable AAA repair shops in the Ballard area. You might want to check one of them out instead.