Maxima Forums - Hot Tint Speed & Sound in Gaithersburg, MD are HACKS!

Copying and pasting my review from Yelp here. For locals, stay FAR AWAY FROM THIS SHOP. Unless of course you like having hacks work on your car who lie to cover themselves.

I don't think you can possibly find a worse place to take your car than here. I had a Viper alarm installed here, it was one of the only local shops that claimed that can do "push button start installs". When I went to pick the car up after install, a few of the modules I had paid to install were sitting on the seat still. I pointed this out and they pulled my car back in and from what I could tell just spliced/twisted wires and taped with electrical tape. Wasn't impressed that it was forgotten and had to stand around while they finished this up.

Over the course of several years ownership with this alarm I have had multiple issues that have required me to return to the installer to have fixed. These issues would leave my alarm in a not completely functioning state; so I had to return quickly to have these issues fixed. The first several times they blamed it on my battery dying. I found this strange, as I'd expect a car alarm to be designed to prepare for such an instance without breaking itself. This proceeded to keep happening and the company eventually started charging me $50 to repair this; despite having no explanation of why it was occuring other than my battery was low.

Just a week ago, my alarm "broke" again. After having shelled out over $1000 on this alarm and continuing to pay more; I had grown extremely frustrated. I contacted the manufacturer of the alarm, Viper, and escalated the situation to have them look more into what is going on. When they contacted the shop; the owner began to completely make up brand new excuses as to the cause of the problem including claiming that I have all kinds of "electrical modifications to the car". I escalated the situation again with Viper and got approval to take the alarm to another shop to be reviewed. One thing they don't tell you about Viper is once you have it installed somewhere, you can never take it anywhere else!

Viper finally gave me the approval to take it to another shop over the weekend. Within 30 minutes this other Viper authorized dealer was able to identify several glaring errors in their installation including their choice of modules and methods. Most of the wires were simply stripped, spliced, and taped over which honestly seems pretty amateur for a "professional alarm installer". I have a tilt-sensor module that was discovered dangling, hanging from it's install wires. The one time we attempted the remote start, smoke started coming from wiring under the hood so we immediately shut it off.

So the downside is that I'll be having to pay this new Viper dealer to completely rip out this alarm install and re-install it correctly because Hot Tint Speed and Sound is apparently a bunch of hacks who not only lie to cover their butts but have 0 knowledge about alarm installs. The upside is that I never have to deal with this group of idiots ever again; except when I see them in small claims court as I proceed to file a lawsuit for some of my original money back for the install and subsequent repairs. My new installer documented everything that was done wrong so this will be rather easy.

I not only highly advise to stay away from this shop; but I actively encourage anyone else who has received poor service to put that information out there and have more accurate reviews of this company on the internet! I would have never have ever gone there had I known what I know now.

P.S. One of my coworkers bought a tint deal on Groupon through them and had to have his tint re-done 3 times and there are still a few mistakes. This company doesn't just screw up alarms but everything they touch. You can tell the quality of their work by looking at their employee-owned cars they all have terrible quality modifications done to them and look like they were done by a backyard mechanic.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/hot-tint-spe...d-gaithersburg