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This thread is for any mechanics out there who might know the proper way to handle this.
My daughter took her car in to a backyard mechanic. He is licensed but works from home. There were issues with overheating. She specifically told him the parts her husband just replaced himself, but some of the problems they were having went beyond what he did.
The mechanic told her what needed to be done, and replaced the needed parts. However, he also replaced parts that did not need to be replaced, as they had just recently been done and the extra work was not authorized, as my daughter or her husband were never notified as to what else he was going to do and replace.
Now the bill is way beyond what they budgeted for....long story short, can she legally ask him to take off the parts and just give them back their old parts and the car, as is? She had to have it towed to this guy's house and will have to have it towed home. However, she is worried he might retaliate if she mentions legalities and we dont know if he is capable of, or would, sabotoge her car. Basically all Im asking is can she legally ask him to take those parts he put on, that were unauthorized, give her car back as is and just pay him for the work he already did?
I would need to see why the car was repaired. If it was broken I need to know WHAT was broken. If anyone replaced parts I would need to see WHO and WHY and then I would need to know if the car is fixed now and I would need to know what fixed it. You best pay the guy and learn a lesson that you should never TRY to fix your car and then not finish...The finish part is what cost.Most mechanics dont do partial repairs. They either get the whole job or no job. Once a guy wanted his tranny rebuilt by a local dealer. He knew that hours of labor could be saved if he removed it from the car and took just the tranny to the dealer. When he got to the dealer he quickly learned it doesnt work that way.They wouldnt reduce their price because they were going to get paid for the whole job or no job at all. Any parts you say you didnt need to repair the car should have been removed BEFORE you hired a mechanic.If a person does a poor job fixing something and then a mechanic works on it doing something else people tend to blame the mechanic for anything that breaks after that. Too risky Why didnt they get a solid ball park estimate first. Maybe something in writing. When you dont do business this way its can give a less than honest mechanic a way to legally steal from you.
Last edited by crestliner; 08-12-2012 at 02:00 PM..
If the car is in your possession, and the check has not yet been written, you have leverage. If it's already paid for, or if this "mechanic" still has it in his possession, you've just learned a very expensive lesson.
The sad truth is that there are a few select/dirty mechanics out there that will do this sort of things. Not many, but a few. Unfortunately, those who WILL do it have done it before, and know exactly how to get by with it.
Theres not a lot of anything you can do, he's not licensed nor insured to do this work at his house, she has no written documentation of the first agreement, let alone the stuff he did without authorization. He could have easily just said, it costs more so Im charging you more. You deal with shade tree mechanics and you have no recourse or warranty to go back on.
There's a lot of "gray areas" about how this transaction and repair took place.
First of all, if there was any question as to the extent of repairs needed to return the car to service, your daughter should have requested an itemized estimate from the mechanic before authorizing the completed work. Secondly, your daughter should have anticipated that there would be diagnostic time for which the mechanic was entitled to charge before an estimate could be created. Third, with these types of problems and knowing that somebody had worked on it before you without success, a mechanic may need to take corrective action in order to be able to properly diagnose the extent of the problems.
Consider that the mechanic doesn't know the extent of the skills that your S-i-L has working on a car, nor the quality level of the parts that were installed. Yet your daughter is asking him to rely upon those skills and unknown parts to effect a repair. It wouldn't be the first time that the parts were incorrect, improperly installed and/or damaged, or that they masked the true problem with the vehicle and required that the mechanic replace them again to verify that they aren't the source of the continuing overheating problem with the car.
If the newly installed parts are returnable, I assume that you could ask the mechanic to remove them and give credit for those items. But do you know for certain that the recently replaced items are in good condition and serviceable? At least, for the moment, it appears that the mechanic has repaired the car so it can be driven and is entitled to be paid for his diagnostic time, repair time, and the parts he installed.
Do you really want to have your daughter get a car back in inoperable with a box full of used components which may have been contributing to the problems when the car came into the mechanic's shop?
This may be an expensive lesson, but if your daughter wants to be cutting corners on keeping her car on the road, heading to a shadetree mechanic may not be the best course of action. Better to pay him now if the car is running properly than to pay him partially and not have a running car.
Yeh, buddy had a car painted by a "back yard body-man" ages ago. He raved and raved about how much experience this guy had painting cars, all the custom work he'd done in the past, etc etc...buddy received a car with no clearcoat, spiderweb cracks all over, and some terrible masking jobs done. It was highschool, and we were young, but the truth stuck with me for a long time...see comps and get references. Neighbor had his 65 GTO painted in a guys personal garage a few years ago, the work looked top notch, and the guy spent a TON of time getting the body straight and ready for color...but it didn't hurt that my neighbor did all the disassembling himself, which included separating the body from the frame, removing all the glass, and essentially delivering a shell to be painted...frame off restos are great.
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