As you're learning, word gets around among professionals about the strengths and weaknesses of various shops, and definitely about individual mechanics. The guy who cobbled up your transmission probably has a habit of shooting himself in the foot and I'll bet he has a hard time getting, or keeping a job. My father was the first man in Nashville Tennessee to work on automatic transmissions back in the late 1940's, and I had the distinct privelege to see a lot of top-quality transmission work being done as I grew up. It's not brain surgery, but transmission work requires an incredible attention to detail and very clean working conditions. On some valve bodies, the shift valves are fitted so closely that I can hold a valve in my hand for a couple of minutes and it won't go back in the hole it came out of just from the temperature change. Microscopic pieces of dirt in that valve body locks the shift valves up like it was a handful of sand!
Jerry
