I've taken my cars to Mark often over the years and at first was quite pleased with the work and his charismatic demeanour. It's a father son business and comes across very preofessional and legit. Over the years, however, the service has gotten increasingly worse. He gets very short and tries to walk away when discussing problems and refuses to quote the costs of repairs he insists are necessary -- all the while stating that he doesn't know until he investigates further -- and charges for the diagnosis.
This compounded recently when I blew an exhaust valve in my engine and he spent 2.5 hours working on it, put a bunch of parts in and then decided he didn't know exactly what was wrong. All the while without calling me.
The result: I drove it off of his lot in the same condition I brought it there with a new set of $60 spark plugs (I don't even know where you get plugs that expensive!) some other parts, the results of a compression test, a short moody statement that he still didn't know exactly what was broken and a $260 bill.
I took it to another mechanic because he couldn't tell me what the repairs would cost and was charging through the nose to look at it.
I took it to Yoshi motors down on Clark, in 15 minutes he knew what was wrong, didn't charge me, laughed at the $60 plugs, gave me a quote, and then called me a couple of hours later when the quote changed. Professional.