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Getting my money back


ero1220

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Six months ago I had the exhaust opened up to 2.5" from the Y-pipe back, I supplied Dynomax mufflers and Magnaflow tips for installation. I asked the guy if he could build the y-pipe, how much the parts would cost, when he could do it, etc etc. I get the runaround for two weeks on the work - "Oh I couldn't get to it today, drop it off again on Saturday" and etc. By the time he actually got anything done I was already away at school and driving back and forth.

When the work was finally finished, the tips were crooked, sticking out at different angles, and protruding from the bumper more than 5 inches. I got every excuse from "I don't want them to blacken the bumper" to "There isn't a lot of room to bend the pipe to get it to fit under there" over the course of three days I had him cut off and reset the tips several times. School was starting to get into swing and both my time and patience ran out quickly - he got close and I lived with it.

Since I have been away at school and don't exactly own a lift I haven't really had a great look under there... here is what I have come to find out yesterday - the Y-pipe he built is not truly an inverted Y-pipe at all, it looks like it was built from spare parts lying around the garage. The mufflers were hung with a set of rusty old hangers. The welding was sloppy. There is PLENTY of room left to cut and bend pipe to make everything fit. And, finally, the most disturbing part - he hacked away parts of the frame to make his piece of crap "Y-pipe" fit and the whole area around it is beginning to rust severely. If I had any idea he was going to do this I wouldn't have let him touch my car. I had this work done at a national chain to reduce risk of having some hack break my car - big mistake.

This brings me to my second and more positive part of the story. I brought my car in to a garage called Lou's Custom Exhaust in North Reading, MA to have the resonator eliminated and see what they could do about setting the tips. The gentleman I sold my 93 STS to last summer recommended them because he had been impressed with the work they had done on a few of his cars. I hopped up onto the lift, the car was up, zip zip, cut cut, work was done in five minutes and not a shoddy job at all. Then they proceeded to work on the tips - shortening, cutting, leveling, and downright obsessing over their alignment. I was standing right there the whole time and I was highly impressed with their level of work. They explained to me what the last guy had done to hack up my car and I really felt like I was taken advantage of. He was the owner of the garage, and I know he is still there.

Unfortunately I cannot locate the documentation for the work he did six months ago... I'm usually very good about keeping it all together. I'm about to go through it all again to double check but... The question I pose to you guys is: even without documentation, do I still have a case to recoup my money? What would be the best way to go about it?

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You can go back and confront the shop owner, but I doubt very seriously if you will get any money back unless he is unusually honest documentation or not. Most shops say on their paperwork that once the car leaves the shop it's yours. Live and learn, do not pay unless the job is the way you want it. Once they got the money it is over. Sorry.

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If that guy in MA straightened out your problems I would chalk it up to a bad learning experience and consider yourself lucky. You have had work done to it already by another shop already, and that you dont have a receipt, its kind of your word against their word now. Thank your lucky stars they didn't screw something up, how did your O2 sensors look?

Realize something, many of these national chains hire 'experienced' high school, and college kids and and others that are clueless without formal training. My dad used to call them slam bang mechanics. They talk the talk you want to hear but they can't deliver as they really don't have the skill, experience or required knowledge, they are learning on YOU. I would only let someone work on my car if I have seen the results of their work. Like you did in MA. If the workers are my sons age I politely nod my head, try not to show fear on my face and make for the door. Even with a direct reference and seeing their work its risky. If you start off right from the beginning realizing that one out of two people you meet are a-holes, as I do, you will be more careful (that is not meant to sound pompous, its comes from observation and viewing results). To me honest, high quality mechanics are hard to find.

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yea.... that's pretty much what I expected to hear. It sucks but it's a good learning experience I guess. As far as signing to the work when I paid for it... I had the tips reset three times after the work was paid in full.

I suspect I can't make anything of the fact that he half-assed the whole job at this point... but the fact that he permanently damaged the car by compromising the integrity of the chassis without my knowledge is entirely inexcusable and unacceptable.

If the workers are my sons age I politely nod my head, try not to show fear on my face and make for the door.

That's funny because I chose this place because I knew a few of the guys from high school and the owner gave me the impression that I would be taken care of. Your sons are around my age I believe. I'm 20, I'll have plenty more experiences with mechanics and I'm always learning.

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I did not pick up on the fact that they hacked away parts of your FRAME thats entirely different. I would have someone look at the hacking and see if its serious and if it is, I would persue vigorously, sorry.

In addition, no insult was intended with the age statement my sons are 19 and 25 in fact, its just that would you rather have a 22 year old working on your car with 6 months experience or a 40 year old with 20 years experience, thats all! I think you can understand what I am saying.

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>The welding was sloppy.    And, finally, the most disturbing part - he hacked away parts of the frame to make his piece of crap "Y-pipe" fit and the whole area around it is beginning to rust severely. <

Now THAT part of your story is really disconcerting. For safety reasons (structural integrity) the frame of a car is nothing to fool around with, certainly not cut into unless you’ve done your homework and know exactly what you’re doing. This joker sounds far from that. I’d get that car into a body and frame shop for a quick look at by some experts. Listen to them and proceed from there. You may have grounds to peruse some very necessary repairs to the frame, and cost recovery.

I wouldn’t fool around with this, especially since it’s rusting. That’s some seriously shoddy workmanship you’ve described and should be rectified!

'93 STS.. opened, dropped, wide...fast.

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The crew at Lou's has offered to rip out the original work and do it correctly, including resetting the mufflers and tips again, for a decent price. They told me to come back when I was ready.

I will be taking the car to a body shop next to my work that we have a fairly good personal and business relationship with either tomorrow or monday. I've never had any work done there before, but I'm only asking for opinions and assessments. Even though their business isn't on our land, I've done some maintenance work in their parking lot and on their building.

I do maintenance work at a shopping center in Nashua that I also help manage. I'm on site 5-6 days a week as both a handy man and the owner's rep. It's a good way to learn the commercial real estate business from a few different angles. It's also nice because sometimes I do work inside the tenants' space as a favor instead of having them have to call a corporate approved guy and pay up big. Keeps tenants happy and I get to eat for free most days :P

It's a good way to spend the time I took off from school

Anyway I'll see what Nashua Collision and Auto Body has to say about it, share with you guys, and decide what the best avenue would be from there.

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Hey you are a busy guy, college, caddy, and managing real estate I am impressed! I am a commericial real estate appraiser and I am currently appraising a 350,000 square foot community shopping center. I hope all goes well with your car, Mike

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First of all, you cannot get your money back because the law says that you have to pay for services rendered, and this no-money back intertwines with Mechanic's Lein laws. (This horrendous legal loophole for the crooks--99.9% of automobile mechanics are crooks--was done to protect mechanics the strong property owner's right laws we have in America. Property owners have exclusive rights. In other wordl if you could strong arm your car out of the shop without paying for repairs, property right laws would void any claim the mechanic had. For instance, if someone lent you their car with a half dead engine, and you put an engine in it, then they came back and took the car, without asking you--just kiffed it, there isn't a thing you can do about it. If you went and strong armed your engine out of the car, you would be charged criminally.) Simply, you have to pay for services rendered.

Tip: A way to help create a loophole in Mechanic's Lein Laws is to make automotive repair payments on a credit card. The finincial transaction is between the vendor and the creditor, making you a venue. Becuse the finincial transaction was betwen the merchant/creditor, your car is immune from Mechanic Lein Laws. After all, it's not the creditor's car. It's yours, so property right laws protect your car because it was not your finincial obligation. The creditor and merchant have a most clear written contract, and the contract states that services and products must be delivered free of defects, unless otherwise stated. If you're unhappy with the repair, tell the creditor, and the creditor will make the merchant deliver a defect free product, or withold payment. (How do I know this little insight? I spent almost 15 years of my life as an auto mechanic, the reason I know that 99.9% of auto mechanics are crooks. The incompentency rate is about the same.)

As to the damage to the frame, you have to prove that it has compromised the integrity of the car. This will be impossible to do without a collision or the damage does whatever compromise you claim it will do.

Seeing that the term "structural integrity" has been brought up, let's look at the history of structural integrity and its compromise during repairs: 1982 a huge evolution of structral integrity entered the auto market. Windsheilds, backlites, and stationary glass, were becoming part of the vehicle's structral integrity. The way that glass had become intergrated with the vehicle's frame was by urethaneing the glass in place.

Typical mentality of the average automechanic, they were going to do it the old way of installing glass, and the old way was instaling "glued-in" glass was with butal, a black, nasty, stringy substance with the consistancy similar to Silly Putty. This created a huge deficiency in the integrity of the car. Not only did the car suffer excessive damage in genneral collisions (there was no frame left after installing glass with pukey) but also, rollovers and ejections through windsheilds flying out when occupants slammed against them had catostropic results. This went on for years before even the most clever lawyers caught wind.

The general collisions, simply, didn't net enough money, wereby laywers would fool around with such cases. In the late 80's/early 90's a fatal ejection through the windsheild case was won against Safelight aka LSI (Leer Sigler Inc) because the windsheld installation with PTI butal (the worst of the worst butal on the market) compromised the intended strenght. The plantiff won howeve many million, but they won only because Safelight has enough money that it would interest a lawyer enough to persue the case. The defense, however, was that if the occupants had worn seat belts, it would have never happend, and as a mandatory seat belt motorcycle helmet advocate, I agree.

Even with the compromised integrity of the vehicles, this should have worn seat belts was a strong defense. However, the change in the industry came along with rollover cases because it was clear that these post 82 vehicles with butal installed windsheilds did not meet the federal rollover requirements. In addition, many children were fatalities of these rollovers. Now a days, 100% of urethane glass is replaced with the correct urethane sealer, but it took, but it took 15 to 20 years to restore the intended integrity.

This is quite important to your issue. These most dangerous repairs were driving down America's highways by the mega millions for years. Let's not ponder on the fact that it blossomed out of a select few, that started snowballing into laywers' retriement fund, and keep focus on the fact that action didn't happen because the problem may occur. Rather, the action was the direct result because IT DID HAPPEN!

Do you actually think that you can get something for notches in your car, based on the fact that something might happen?

One more, and Ima out of here: Automotive chains are the worst place to get your car repaird. It sounds good because they have megamillions for advertizing. Also, age and/or experaince doesn't have didilly squat to do with the quality of the repair. There are kids out there, who have been skinning knuckes for a few months who are tops in their feild, and there are old geezers who have been doing of for 30 years, and a chimpanzee could better work. In fact, the ol geezers are probally worse than the kids because some of the lousiest work was done by the old geezers. After all, it was the old geezers--not the urethane babies--who had been pukeying in windsheilds for 30 years, and everything had worked fine, so why do it anothe way?

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Regardless of the analogies and the 'legaleze', if some retard of a 'mechanic' cut chunks out of one of my car frame to justify his own botch job (with out me knowing it until later), I would bust it off in the guys behind to make it right thinking Perry Mason was coming after him with a rope. (And me holding the other end..)

I would not let the guy get away with it. For my own good, or anyone else's in the community.

'93 STS.. opened, dropped, wide...fast.

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How did you pay for the bad work? Credit card, check, or cash? If you paid by cc or check you at least have on record a transaction with that business. If it was by cc then you really have a fighting chance. Then you would want to contact your cc company and have them go to bat for you. Before I get into a long winded explaination (cough), lets first find out how you paid.

As Bob and others have implied.....you bet I would want some compensation for the shoddy work. At the very least you will want to Try. Not only because it's the right thing to do but so ,in your mind, you can let it go and not let it tear away at you.

"Burns" rubber

" I've never considered myself to be all that conservative, but it seems the more liberal some people get the more conservative I become. "

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Hey you are a busy guy, college, caddy, and managing real estate I am impressed! I am a commericial real estate appraiser and I am currently appraising a 350,000 square foot community shopping center. I hope all goes well with your car, Mike

To keep me busy is to keep me sane. The shopping center I help maintain and manage is around 300,000 sq. ft. 235,000 of which is occupied and operational with another 20,000 in various stages of construction. There is always something going on. As for management - I just take care of construction and maintenance invoices and tenant payment schedules. I log in payments and approve utility expenses and such, construction contracts and leases will come as I learn the business more :)

I guess I'm not really sure what I can expect out of the situation with my car. Since the transaction was handled with an ATM type card, my checking account is the only creditor <_<

Obviously I'm heated about the situation, but I also understand that I have to be realistic about my expectations of what can come of this. Bob D summed up how I'm feeling... Regardless of the fact that if I was involved in an auto accident tomorrow the notches taken out of the frame of my vehicle would not have an effect on my safety in a crash, they are still there. Who is to say, especially you an01sts, that if gone unnoticed the corrosion would not have advanced enough to make large sections of the frame brittle in an accident? In six months there is already noticable rust and corrosion, what would it look like in a year? Two years? It may be more horrifying in principle than in reality, but put yourself in my position - would you ignore the problem? Would you ignore the fact that it was done purposefully without your knowledge? It isn't exactly butal around my windshield not holding up in an accident but I certainly still reserve my right to feel concerned about it. Anyway we'll see what the auto body guys have to say about it monday...

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