Auto Repair Issue with a slight Legal Twist

Essentially what I’m looking for here is to find out what, if any, established rights a customer has when dealing with a mechanic, specifically here in Chicago, Illinois. Since it’d be a pretty dull post otherwise I’ll give you all the story that led to the question.

A good friend of mine owns a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited and a couple weeks ago she noticed a noise when driving. It gradually progressed until it got to a disturbing level at which point she asked me if I had any idea what it was. Almost immediately I identified the issue as a power steering problem, first because the noise changed and increased when you turned and that there was a nice little puddle of steering fluid on the ground. Oh, and it was about 5 times harder to steer. Women, I tells ya.

I chose a nearby Firestone to take it to and they repaired it (and some overdue brake work). or so I thought. They described the problem as being a kink in a hose which led to the leak and subsequent damage to the pump. Personally, I found this fishy because the steering was not nigh impossible to use, I presumed the problem was merely a leak and partial loss of fluid.

The plot thickened a week later when the steering proceeded to completely fail after working fine for a few days. This was unlike the earlier trouble, there was no loud mechanical sound when you turned and the power steering totally quit meaning you had to really crank on it to make it steer under the stationary weight. Plus you could hear the faint sucking sound of the dry pump.

The mechanic resisted ponying up for a tow truck to re-repair it, which pissed me off. I managed to drive it there and they diagnosed the new problem as being a defective new pump. Again, I smelled bullshit since I could hear the sound of it trying to pump and it conveniently absolved them from fault. Nonetheless they redid the repair with a second pump free of charge.

Here we are now with it failing again in the exact same manner as it did after the first repair. Clearly it’s very, very unlikely that it’s a second manufacturer defective pump. They either broke something when they fixed it the first time, fixed it improperly twice and perhaps never identified the original problem. Obviously my trust in their abilities is totally gone.

Again we requested a tow truck, which they promised this time. My friend was out of town over the weekend and she made arrangements with the Firestone folks and her building’s doorman to get it towed while she was away for a third repair. Of course she returned to see that the car was not towed and they never called her or I to discuss it in the interim. I again used my massive man-muscles to drive it to the shop this evening after hours.

This leads me to my series of questions:

  1. Does anyone have a educated guess as to what the mechanical issue is specifically and why it would work fine for a week and then fail completely?

  2. Do we have any legal rights as they specifically apply to mechanics/customers? She’s obviously in about $900 in repairs, at least, and ideally we’d like to get a refund on the full charges and take it elsewhere. Alternatively, we’d hope they’d give us at least a partial refund for the repeated inconvenience coupled with piss-poor customer service in addition to fixing the car properly themselves. I don’t have the documentation handy so I can’t say what the companies stated policy is in this situation.

  3. Does anyone know if I should be addressing our concerns to anyone besides the manager of the store itself? They are a Firestone shop, no idea if they are franchises or corporate owned, but presumably they’d have a stake in trying to make us, if not happy customers, at least not livid and vindictive customers.

  4. Without deviating too far from GQ territory what would you folks do in this situation?

I haven’t yet taken the time to Google for the legal component of the question in an effort to get it posted here before everyone goes to bed, so if there’s a really easy answer out there forgive me. Plus I do intend to visit the Firestone website and see if there’s any corporate satisfaction guarantee. I’ll report back on both points if anything juicy comes up.

I don’t know thr franchising deals at Firestone, but it can’t hurt to escalate your complaint to a district/regional supervisor, manager or equivalent.

I can only offer a WAG to 1. The pump was fine and they never changed it. The problem was a leaky hose, but either the part was unavailable or (more likely) it was too much hassle to change, so they cut the leaky part of the hose and attached another one with hose clamps.

I had the same problem on my car, a Hyundai Santa Fe. I had a leaky hose, but I had to wait for about a month for the part to come from Korea. So I decided to cut the leaky part of the hose and add a new one. The repair failed about 4 days later. There is a lot of pressure on those hoses plus the rubber warms up and becomes soft. Eventually the hose clamps slip and all the fluid drains.

Also, the hose is a huge one piece thing with pre-formed bends and several anchorage points. It takes more that two hours to take out and reinstall.

I’ll be speaking with the shop in a hour or so. Still not sure how to handle the issue, but advice is still requested.

A good friend of mine owns a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited and a couple weeks ago she noticed a noise when driving. It gradually progressed until it got to a disturbing level at which point she asked me if I had any idea what it was. Almost immediately I identified the issue as a power steering problem, first because the noise changed and increased when you turned and that there was a nice little puddle of steering fluid on the ground. Oh, and it was about 5 times harder to steer.

You don’t mention your friend saying anything about the increased steering effort. Did she not notice that? (Just curious.)

Anyway, from the description it sounds like loss of fluid could explain the symtoms. That does depend on the noise, however - a worn pump can make noise independent of the noise from a low fluid level.

They described the problem as being a kink in a hose which led to the leak and subsequent damage to the pump. Personally, I found this fishy because the steering was not nigh impossible to use, I presumed the problem was merely a leak and partial loss of fluid.

What I find fishy is the “kink” explanation. I would think it darn near impossible to have a kink in a pressure hose. A return hose could kink and maybe even starve the pump for fluid, but I wouldn’t expect that to cause a leak, and I would think it would have shown up long ago, unless it was recently disturbed (I don’t see how the hose would kink just sitting there).

The plot thickened a week later when the steering proceeded to completely fail after working fine for a few days. This was unlike the earlier trouble, there was no loud mechanical sound when you turned and the power steering totally quit meaning you had to really crank on it to make it steer under the stationary weight. Plus you could hear the faint sucking sound of the dry pump…they diagnosed the new problem as being a defective new pump.

This isn’t quite making sense to me. If the previous noise was a “mechanical” sound, and not the noise typical from low fluid, that suggests that the old pump was badly worn. A faulty pump could result in no power assist, but the issue is clouded by mention of a dry pump. Was it indeed dry, or could the “faint sucking sound” have been something else (even normal)? If it was dry, was there still a leak in the system? If not, improper filling/bleeding comes to mind.

Here we are now with it failing again in the exact same manner as it did after the first repair. Clearly it’s very, very unlikely that it’s a second manufacturer defective pump. They either broke something when they fixed it the first time, fixed it improperly twice and perhaps never identified the original problem. Obviously my trust in their abilities is totally gone.

Agreed, and I don’t blame you.

Do we have any legal rights as they specifically apply to mechanics/customers?
Sure. The real question is the ease of exercising them.

She’s obviously in about $900 in repairs…

For a power steering hose and pump? Sounds awfully high. If that figure includes other work (like the brakes you mentioned), then calculate the cost of the work in question. It’s irrelevant and unfair to bandy about a price that includes work which is not in dispute.

…ideally we’d like to get a refund on the full charges and take it elsewhere.

Most shops won’t agree to this. They have a responsibility to deliver what you paid for, but they obviously want to do it in house where their cost is less than a full refund or paying another shop to do it. You may find that if you take it elsewhere and get it fixed, they might reimburse you for either what you paid them or what you paid the other shop. This is unlikely unless clear evidence is available that they messed up, and even then could require your suing in small claims court. Nevertheless, at this point it appears questionable that this store can actually fix the car.

… Alternatively, we’d hope they’d give us at least a partial refund for the repeated inconvenience coupled with piss-poor customer service in addition to fixing the car properly themselves.
Not terribly likely, but not out of the question.

Big corporations like Firestone tend to cave in more readily than independent shops, but it can vary depending upon how strongly the store manager feels they could win in court. The consumer has an advantage in court because of a general bias against repair shops, but that can vary depending upon how strong a case you can make. I would complain to a higher level of Firestone’s heirarchy, and if necessary gently bring up going to court. It’s worth complaining about assertively (but politely) and insistently. And if no satisfaction is provided from that, consider a small claims suit.

Back to the main concern:

Repair shops, like any business, have a legal responsibility to provide reasonable merchandise and/or service in exchange for the money they receive. Depending on state (or local) laws, enforcing this may be easy, difficult, or somewhere in between. In California, auto repair shops are under heavy scrutiny and the system is biased toward the customer. In other areas, it’s easy for shops to get away with crap and customers have to put in a lot of effort to get a fair shake. But probably in most states, between the Attorney General’s office and Small Claims Court, there is decent access to help when needed.

Ideally, disputes won’t get to that point. The better grade shops tend to bend over backwards to be fair (or even beyond fair) to their customers. And the better grade shops tend to evaluate and repair things correctly so that these situations seldom arise. They also tend to communicate well so that customers understand what their paying for, and feel they got their money’s worth.

In a case like the OP, probably the best approach is to pursue the issue to some degree of satisfaction. So far, it sounds like fair value was not received for the money paid. If the store manager agrees, he may work with you to reach an acceptable conclusion. If he doesn’t agree, the corporation might. And if it doesn’t agree, the courts might. Just keep in mind that it’s not always a case of the shop failing in its end of the bargain. Sometimes reasonable satisfaction is in getting an explanation of something that isn’t readily apparent to the layman.

Omni, I’m at work and swamped, so this’ll be quick and far from throrough:

There is an Illinois auto repair statute that I’ve had occasion to use in the past. Here’s an online link that matches what I recall:

http://www.consumerlawclass.com/statutes/815ilcs306.html#306-15

I have not checked this link for accuracy, or checked for any recent amendments.

The statute may not directly help you, but it does impose some requirements on car repair shops that may not have been met here. Alternatively, it may give you some leverage to demand evidence (old parts, etc) that may help in the dispute.

I’m not your lawyer and you aren’t my client. This is general information about a possibly relevant law, and isn’t reliable legal advice. I don’t know enough about this situation to give you that. See a lawyer in person (who can ask questions and look at documents) for that.

Thanks for the replies so far, especially Gary T and Random. I’ll respond to you posts in a moment, first an update is due.

I spoke with the manager-on-duty this morning in person, frustratingly the store manager is on vacation all week starting today so my payment issues will likely be put on hold, but they are again trying to fix the car.

What was explained to me this time around was that it isn’t a defective pump, though they still claim it was last time which I still doubt, but instead an issue with the connection between the replacement pump and the hose. It’s loose and when not under pressure the fluid leaks out causing a failure. They showed me the issue and you could see there was some wiggle in the fixture and the area around the connection was slick with leaking fluid. They’ve tried tightening it and looked to replace the o-ring both of which were unsuccessful. They then ordered another pump, this time from the manufacturer (the fact they got it elsewhere before gives me concern, it’s not clear to me if the two parts are different or if they are the same and one is just a generic copy) in hopes it fits better. They called to inform me that it wasn’t successful and the loose fitting is still a problem. Now they’ve ordered a new hose and all the linkages and intend to install that tomorrow in hopes everything fits and seals as intended.

Replies to follow in the next post.

Yeah, she noticed. Which was the biggest reason for my amusement when she was at a loss to guess what kind of problem it was. The big pool of fluid beneath her parking spot also makes me question her powers of observation, all in good fun of course.

The loss of fluid certainly seemed to explain all the issues, I didn’t bother to check the levels since the puddle was a pretty clear indicator. I suppose my only question is why the system got noisy (difficult to describe, basically a loud whirring, spinning noise - not quite a grinding, almost like a really loud belt - I attributed it to the sound of a dry, or at least mostly dry, pump working) but still offered decent power assist. It was noticeably harder to steer but not so bad as to be difficult. My understanding of the mechanics of the system reach their limit there I suppose.

Totally agree here. Unfortunately I didn’t have the mechanic give me a visual review of the issue. The first two times scheduling required a after hours drop-off and I didn’t have time to go on site to check it out. When he showed me the hose this time around and I saw how thick, short and straight it ran the “kink” description was pretty hard to buy. It’s true the didn’t specify which hose it was and it could be the return hose, I don’t know what that looks like myself. It’ll be a question I follow up with next time.

One of my feelings is that certainly there was a leak of some sort for whatever reason upon the first repair. The fact that the steering still mostly worked makes me question if the pump was actually bad at all. The noise and loss of assist might have just been a fluid issue. I’m afraid the mechanic might have replaced the pump just to be safe. The cynic might presume it’s a bill padding move, the optimist might figure it just good discretion. In either case, it seems they created a new issue in the process by tampering with the linkages/parts.

I’ll try and clarify just to sate your curiosity. Initially the noise was the loud whirring/spinning noise which I described as mechanical. Probably a poor initial description on my part. I don’t have the knowledge to say if this is a typical “low fluid” sound or if it indicates a badly worn pump. My claiming a “dry pump” was probably unwise, that’s just conjecture on my part and I’m not savvy enough about cars to make that claim confidently. After the first repair there was a big puddle under the car and the steering was entirely lost. The sound I heard as I drove it was faint and I equated it with a dry sucking sound but very well could have been something different. Aside from the mechanics description of a “defective pump” I don’t know what was or wasn’t happening there. Another follow up question is needed to get the full story.

I suppose I wasn’t really planning on taking legal action presuming they fix it free of charge. More or less what I was curious about is if there exists anything similar to the “lemon law” or a “patients bill of rights” type guideline for auto repairs. They certainly have a reputation for being one of the trickiest services a consumer can buy. Thought it wasn’t unlikely that something was in writing somewhere which would give me a negotiating point when requesting a refund.

I don’t have the work detail, she’s got it, so I’m guessing a bit there. The total cost was right about $1600 which was for new rotors and brakes and the steering. I don’t know the precise breakdown but I think the brakes alone was estimated at ~$800, in any case the repair wasn’t cheap. I’ll let you know when I get a look at the invoice. As you say, I had no intention of arguing any of the costs outside of those directly applicable to the steering repair.

Figured this was unlikely and they’ve already begun work for the third time so I suppose it’s moot.

We’ll see, considering the circumstance they shouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. The MOD I spoke with today intimated that they’ll discuss possible compensation for the trouble without my pressing for it, so I’m guessing it might be likely I’ll get something. Frankly I think asking them to reimburse the labor portion of the charges is fair considering it seems that’s likely the crux of the problem.

Yeah, once there’s a resolution I’ll contact the corporate office. I’m going to allow the store manager to take the initiative before escalating a complaint. Unfortunately their website has no stated satisfaction guarantee, so that’s no assistance.

Hmm… I almost could’ve sworn there was a return of parts provision here, and now I can’t find it. Please ignore that section of my earlier reply.

I read the link and I can’t say it applies directly here. I have no evidence they acted deceptively and they did not violate any of the guidelines in regards to estimates, invoices and authorization. The issue is more an issue of competence and customer service which doesn’t seem to be addressed in that document. Thanks.

I am only familiar with the specifics in CA since I am a licenced repair shop for computers under similar laws as auto repair shops (not exceeding estimates, return of parts on request, blah, blah, same type of stuff).

I wouldn’t hold my breath on a full refund of labor. If anything you paid for a repair, they are obligated to provide it, period. Anything else is just icing on the cake and “time and trouble” are just if the shop is worried about you as a future customer, which I am sure they assume is a non possibility.

If they cannot fix it right on the third pass perhaps a call to whatever agency regulates auto repair in your state is in order. At least in my case…multiple complaints of failure to complete services or otherwise poor business practices can get me shut down, not just sued. THAT is a far greater threat.

Hmmm. I can only speculate here, so this may be way off, but here’s what this brought to mind:

While some power steering pressure hoses attach firmly (no wiggle) to the fitting at the pump, others have a swivel fitting that allows the hose to rotate in the fitting. I suspect this is what you have. The swivel fittings have special seals designed to allow this motion. It seems odd to me that it would leak when not under pressure - that’s opposite of anything I’ve experienced - but I can see where that could be possible. Anyway, this type fitting isn’t meant to have the hose screwed into it very tightly. I can’t help but wonder if it’s been overtightened.

Usually the fitting on the pump is separable, and can be replaced without getting another whole pump. However, without seeing it, I can’t say for sure if that’s the case here.

Most independent shops get this type of part from the aftermarket rather than from the dealer, and good quality aftermarket parts are available. Unfortunately, poor quality aftermarket parts are also available. As far as I know, new power steering pumps are made by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) supplier and sold only to vehicle manufacturers. Aftermarket pumps are rebuilt (to various quality levels) but were originally manufactured by the OEM. Pumps from the dealership may be new or rebuilt, but either way are high quality.

I have to suspect a low-quality brand of pump and/or installation error being at the heart of the problem here.

Presumably this further work is being done at no additional charge. If so, it indicates a strong commitment to providing a favorable result. Possibly some additional charge will be requested for an upgrade to the originally estimated repair, e.g. the difference in pump prices if the one from the dealership costs more than the aftermarket one. This would not be unreasonable, but would be on shaky ground in that the original agreement was that the problem would be fixed for the amount quoted. Anyway, at this point it sounds like the shop is putting effort into delivering what was paid for.

As far as being compensated for the extra time and aggravation dealing with this, I doubt there’s any legal basis for that. The problems may or may not be their fault, but fixing them is their responsibility. Doing more than that is not. Some shops will do something as a goodwill gesture, but of course it’s already cost them extra time and aggravation as well. You’d probably be doing well to get a discount on future service.

Quick hint on the legal front, standard disclaimer:

Corporations must be represented by an attorney in court. There are some very limited exceptions in some jurisdictions. In AZ, this rule means that you can’t sue a corporation in small claims court, only justice court. I imagine similar rules exist elsewhere. The gist is that the procedure may be more difficult than suing an individual in small claims court. You may not need an attorney of your own, but you will definitely be up against one.

Again, I’m not your lawyer and I’m not advising any particular course of action. That said, the threat of a lawsuit (after you’ve exhausted all other options) might be scarier to the shop than an actual suit.

I’ll take Most likely cause of this repeat repair for 500, Alex.

I got nothing to add, Gary T covered everything