As I promised the owner (Brian), I am going to write an entirely factual review. He may counter with the email exchange between us, which I will check for accuracy and selective editing. I welcome and encourage anyone to see what I wrote to him, and judge for themselves.
In February of 2018, I bought (for $2700) a 2011 Crown Victoria Police Interceptor for my 19-year-old son, who is a college student at Penn State. The car was used exclusively to commute between our house and the PSU campus, 3 miles away. The previous owner had obviously taken good care of the car and had invested probably more money in it than it was worth, and was selling it at a loss. He showed us (and I still have) a receipt from Broadway Transmission for $5587.02 for work that had been done on the car, including $1900 (for the part ONLY) for a remanufactured transmission, procured by Broadway transmission from one of their vendors, which they also installed. The work was done in December 2016, when the car had 125,515 miles on it. (We bought it 15 months and 20,000 miles later). This was a major selling point to us, knowing that this work had been done. We expected the transmission to last for a normal service life.
My son drove the car to school every day for 3 months, until the semester ended in mid-May 2018. After that, it mostly sat in the driveway, as my son went off to chamber music camp in the summer. He has put c. 1500 miles on the car, has never towed with it or overloaded it. We do not live in a hilly area, and my son drives conservatively. He has never had a ticket or an accident.
Last week, he noticed that the car seemed to be losing power, slipping in shifts, and making a whirring sound. We brought the car to the local Aamco shop, whose manager told us that the transmission was shot, that the fluid was full of metal (it is a sealed unit without a dipstick, so the user/owner would not be able to check on his own), and that it would need to be replaced, at a cost of c. $2500. Remembering that the transmission had a three year warranty, I found the paperwork and called Broadway Transmission. They refused to honor the warranty because the warranty only extends to the original customer, not any subsequent owners. I then asked, what about the supplier of the remanufactured transmission which you procured? Will they stand behind their product for you, their retail customer? Again, the answer was no, there was nothing they could (or would) do for me. At this point, I felt I should inform the owner that I felt I had no recourse but to write a negative review on every site I could find. He objected that I was "not his customer", and that the warranty didn't work that way. I replied that I understood that the warranty didn't work that way, but that in any case, I would not want anyone to risk buying a transmission which would only last 20,000 miles. If I sold a car to someone, after having a remanufactured transmission installed, I would not want to feel like I am selling them a time bomb. Presumably a remanufactured transmission adds value to the car, which would justify asking a higher price than one might otherwise. The man who sold us the car certainly thought so.
The owner of Broadway transmission speculated that the previous owner might have abused the car, and also said that usually a transmission will go bad in the first 90 days if it is going to go at all (implying that otherwise, it must be the driver's fault, not the rebuilder's). But this transmission lasted 14 months with the previous owner, then several more months with my son, before suddenly going bad.
As a last resort, I proposed that Broadway cover half the cost of the transmission only ($950), and in exchange I would write him positive reviews instead of negative ones. His reply was quite unexpectedly rude.
He had the nerve to suggest that my "little boy" (the phrase he used) must have been doing "neutral drops" Here he is in his own words -
"I considered offering you to fix it at cost but then I have to consider you like all parents believe their little boys could never abuse a car with neutral drops, burn outs etc because their kids are perfect. Because he only drives it three miles to school and church on Sunday and obeys all laws of speed and keeps his testorone [sic] under control not at all like teens when I was younger."
Notice--only now does he mention that he "considered offering" to fix it at cost. It might have been nice if he had suggested that earlier, but at no time did he suggest *anything* that might make up for the worthless car which now sits in my driveway (we paid $2700 for the car, and it needs at least that much to make it usable again). But he did wish me well a couple times, and said "God Bless." That made me feel so much better.
As I searched for Broadway Transmission on Yelp, I saw that I was not alone in having problems with them. If you want to have a transmission which lasts more than 20K, I suggest you go somewhere else.
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In February of 2018, I bought (for $2700) a 2011 Crown Victoria Police Interceptor for my 19-year-old son, who is a college student at Penn State. The car was used exclusively to commute between our house and the PSU campus, 3 miles away. The previous owner had obviously taken good care of the car and had invested probably more money in it than it was worth, and was selling it at a loss. He showed us (and I still have) a receipt from Broadway Transmission for $5587.02 for work that had been done on the car, including $1900 (for the part ONLY) for a remanufactured transmission, procured by Broadway transmission from one of their vendors, which they also installed. The work was done in December 2016, when the car had 125,515 miles on it. (We bought it 15 months and 20,000 miles later). This was a major selling point to us, knowing that this work had been done. We expected the transmission to last for a normal service life.
My son drove the car to school every day for 3 months, until the semester ended in mid-May 2018. After that, it mostly sat in the driveway, as my son went off to chamber music camp in the summer. He has put c. 1500 miles on the car, has never towed with it or overloaded it. We do not live in a hilly area, and my son drives conservatively. He has never had a ticket or an accident.
Last week, he noticed that the car seemed to be losing power, slipping in shifts, and making a whirring sound. We brought the car to the local Aamco shop, whose manager told us that the transmission was shot, that the fluid was full of metal (it is a sealed unit without a dipstick, so the user/owner would not be able to check on his own), and that it would need to be replaced, at a cost of c. $2500. Remembering that the transmission had a three year warranty, I found the paperwork and called Broadway Transmission. They refused to honor the warranty because the warranty only extends to the original customer, not any subsequent owners. I then asked, what about the supplier of the remanufactured transmission which you procured? Will they stand behind their product for you, their retail customer? Again, the answer was no, there was nothing they could (or would) do for me. At this point, I felt I should inform the owner that I felt I had no recourse but to write a negative review on every site I could find. He objected that I was "not his customer", and that the warranty didn't work that way. I replied that I understood that the warranty didn't work that way, but that in any case, I would not want anyone to risk buying a transmission which would only last 20,000 miles. If I sold a car to someone, after having a remanufactured transmission installed, I would not want to feel like I am selling them a time bomb. Presumably a remanufactured transmission adds value to the car, which would justify asking a higher price than one might otherwise. The man who sold us the car certainly thought so.
The owner of Broadway transmission speculated that the previous owner might have abused the car, and also said that usually a transmission will go bad in the first 90 days if it is going to go at all (implying that otherwise, it must be the driver's fault, not the rebuilder's). But this transmission lasted 14 months with the previous owner, then several more months with my son, before suddenly going bad.
As a last resort, I proposed that Broadway cover half the cost of the transmission only ($950), and in exchange I would write him positive reviews instead of negative ones. His reply was quite unexpectedly rude.
He had the nerve to suggest that my "little boy" (the phrase he used) must have been doing "neutral drops" Here he is in his own words -
"I considered offering you to fix it at cost but then I have to consider you like all parents believe their little boys could never abuse a car with neutral drops, burn outs etc because their kids are perfect. Because he only drives it three miles to school and church on Sunday and obeys all laws of speed and keeps his testorone [sic] under control not at all like teens when I was younger."
Notice--only now does he mention that he "considered offering" to fix it at cost. It might have been nice if he had suggested that earlier, but at no time did he suggest *anything* that might make up for the worthless car which now sits in my driveway (we paid $2700 for the car, and it needs at least that much to make it usable again). But he did wish me well a couple times, and said "God Bless." That made me feel so much better.
As I searched for Broadway Transmission on Yelp, I saw that I was not alone in having problems with them. If you want to have a transmission which lasts more than 20K, I suggest you go somewhere else.