On July 26th, Bryan's car went into the shop. Thankfully I'm now working in town, so we have the ability to go without one of our vehicles for a while - he drops me off at work, then takes my car to work (I loathe not having my vehicle). The car was "ready" on August 5th, meaning I reclaimed my own car in just enough time to leave it in the airport parking garage for 4 days.
When I got to my parents' house, I got a call from Bryan - seems his car is STILL doing the same thing it did when he dropped it off. WTF?!?! $1642.60 and he didn't actually fix the PROBLEM??? I mean, I knew there were a couple of things wrong with the car, but I did NOT expect to shell out a third of the money we'd had earmarked for a house downpayment and not have the problem fixed. So he sat at home all weekend, while my perfectly good (knock on wood) vehicle sat in an airport garage.
Fast forward to yesterday. The problem the car had been having is something we thought would be transmission-related, so we brought it in to the transmission guy in town. Not the tranny. He says it's a broken wrist pin, which a mechanic friend (unfortunately not working at a shop, so no access to tools and therefore can't do the repair himself) said means we'll likely either have to trash the car or replace the engine. Other mechanics might want to fix it, but he said that if it's broken, there's probably small pieces of metal floating around the engine, which would cause more problems down the road.
Shit.
So here I sit, completely pissed at the mechanic to whom we gave a third of our house down payment. Why didn't he know this was wrong? He said he gave the car a complete once-over, and that he did a road-test when he was done. I call bullshit on that one. The car sounds awful. And I'm suspicious, too. Did he fix what he thought he could get away with charging us for, knowing full well that if it had been all the stuff he fixed PLUS the wrist pin/engine that we wouldn't have fixed it? Did he view it as what someone Bryan and I know online calls an "open invoice?" Just get what he can and too bad so sad that the car still isn't driveable, save for a 20 MPH trip to the next mechanic?
Now what the hell are we supposed to do? This is where our spending habits as younger people come back to bite us in the butt. We just paid off a loan, consolidated other debt, and I stopped spending $50 a week in gas with the job switch - we can handle making a car payment, but I doubt we'd be approved for a loan. I'm going to call my bank today and see what's up, but it might wind up being a loan from the International Bank of Grandma.
I hate this. Why couldn't I have been born rich instead of beautiful? ;)
Posted by beenie at August 11, 2004 06:53 AM