The story begins with me driving down RT 495S in Washington D.C, on my way home from a mountain bike ride cruising in my 1996 Toyota Previa LE S/C All-Trac. I was in the second lane of the four lane highway, and there was a work truck about 100 feet ahead of me in the lane to my left. The work truck hit a bump and a pile of sticks and rocks dropped off the back of the truck, next thing I know a rock is hurdling at my windshield at 60 miles per hour. Thump, my windshield is cracked and I realized I’ll be out a couple hundred bucks to repair it. I thought about tracking down the truck, and getting his insurance information, but we were on the highway with no shoulder to pull-over on, so I sucked this one up.
Have you ever had a cracked windshield? It sucks, I’ve had replace two. One with my Ford Focus ST, and now one with my 1996 Toyota Previa. The cost to replace a windshield can be high, it cost me $500 to replace the windshield in my Focus ST. This time around I used a different company. Instead of using Safelite (they rip you off), I went with Best Auto Glass in Fairfax, Virginia.
I was calling around to different auto glass repair shops and Best Auto Glass happened to have good Yelp reviews and be open on a Saturday afternoon. Most are closed Saturday and Sunday for some strange reason. They said if I showed up within an hour they could repair my windshield today. I have a busy schedule next week, so I jumped at the opportunity. When I showed up, it kind of seemed like a ragtag operation, but they knew I was coming and started working on my Previa right away.
The team wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about me taking pictures, they said it was dangerous because all the glass and asked if I could wait in the waiting room, boring. Eventually, they warmed up to the idea of me being there. They told me that this was going to be a difficult job because of the size of the windshield. Isn’t removing all windshields a difficult job? I also hate when people complain about their job to me, it’s not my fault the Previa has a massive windshield, talk with Toyota.
The total job took about one hour from start to finish and it seems like they did a good job. Would I use them again? Well I hope I never have another cracked windshield. But I probably wouldn’t go to these guys again. They weren’t super professional, nor friendly. Here’s hoping my windshield doesn’t crack again, nor fall off on my way to work tomorrow.
