Help just avoided a scam ?

[Trollin226]

I have a younger brother going to college down in Iowa. While he is down their I have been letting him use a older car ( 97 Bonneville ) that I picked up for around town driving. While driving around a few days ago the car started sputtering and died with no restart. Talking on the phone with him I figured it was the fuel pump because of how it stopped as well as he could no longer hear it prime. He happened to be close to a private owned shop and pushed it their for them to look at. When I talked to the shop on the phone I was toled “ well you pretty much need a new engine “ When I asked for a reason I was put on hold for 5 min or so and when he came back on I was told “ the engine was overheated, is seized up, and does not have any more compression.” Not wanting to get into a argument about how they checked compression on a seized engine. Or the fact that the engine has never been overheated or ran low on oil. I had my brother pay the $40 checkup fee and then tow it to Chevrolet dealer. Whear it was diagnosed with a bad fuel pump that is being replaced as I type this. My question is do I have any recourse agenst this shop? I am having a hard time getting over the fact that someone would try to pull a scam like that...

Luke

[pinkfloyd4ever]

only thing that I could think of is a report to the better business bureau about them.

[Jaspernuts]

Go for a drive and put his front teeth through his lip! Just kidding, I would call the shop and talk to the owner, hopefully its not the same guy!

[Scott K]

I would do both! I would call the shop owner and make him aware of what happen, then I would report it to the BBB.

[Hafnutz]

I would do all three things.....that would include the teeth thing.

[Whoaru99]

Waste of time unless you have something in writing (like seriously conflicting diagnosis/repair orders from the two different shops) that supports your claim of one shop trying to scam you. Without this it's merely he said, she said. IMO, of course.

[MNice]

Maybe take out an ad in the local paper thanking the chev dealer for properly diagnosing the problem when XYZ repair company told me the engine was shot.

[Whoaru99]

Maybe I'm just to easy, but personally, without more than word of mouth I might call the shop and say something. However, I think it's possible the XYZ shop could claim libel on you without any supporting documents to show the bogus diagnosis if you put something in public print like a newspaper.

In the big picture it's probably best just to move on. Yeah, sure, there is some principle involved here, but what is to be gained? Spend a couple hundred dollars worth of your time and some high blood pressure for recovery of $40 diagnosis fee?

It's not like the advice was taken and the engine was actually rebuilt, later finding out it was only the fuel pump. The bogus hit in the pocket was avoided by use of common sense.

[Surface Tension]

So did your brother get the car back? I'd be checking the fluid levels just to be on the safe side. If that all checks out and it was just the fuel pump. Call the shop up and tell the owner that the car is at the dealer getting a new fuel pump. Then mention his diagnosis of a seized engine was wrong and could have cost you a lot of money or more then likely, reason to junk the car if you took his advice.

Ask him if he still thinks you should have to pay for that bad diagnosis.

If you get a refund, cool. If not file a complaint with the BBB.

[deadeye]

I would hit the bbb up on that one. Places that do that kind of stuff give the rest a bad name. They should have some kind of consequence for doing that. It would take less than 10 seconds to tell if the engine is seized and its pretty hard to diagnose that one wrong.

[Trollin226]

Just got off the phone with the owner of the shop. After a little conversation he refunded the checkout fee. It was kind of a interesting conversation he questioned why if their was a question about the service we payed it in the first place and picked up the car with no question. After I told him once I was told that the engine was seezed and had no compression I figured his shop was ( Poor word use ) and just wanted it out of thier...

[Jethro80]

Wow, that absolutely terrible. I would hope that it was a employee and not the actual shops procedure

[nofishfisherman]

If you really wanted to hit the shop you could probably find out if its a preffered shop with any insurance companies or AAA. A complaint against it might cause them to lose or atleast drop ratings and in turn hurt their business.

A report to the BBB might send up a flag for AAA when its time to rate the shop again.