I recently went to my mechanic to have some work done to my car. After paying him for the job ($600) I drove off. I noticed right away that my car did not sound the same and was skeptical. I always take my car to a couple of places whether its to get other estimates, make sure I really do need the work or to double check and make sure the job was done right. Well, I did just that. I ended up going back to a mechanic I had gone to previously who had, by the way, commented on what a nice custom exhaust system I had on my car. When he puts my car back on the lift, the second time I went to see him, the first thing he said to me was, “What happened to your exhaust system”? The mechanic I have been taking my car to for the past year stole half of the custom exhaust system I had installed in my car! I am so upset. It has been eating away at me. I plan on going to confront him tomorrow but aside from that I don’t really know what else I should do, other than, report him to the proper authorities. This is insane! You take your car in to be serviced and you get robbed from the mechanic themselves? Someone please tell me something to help me calm down! I really am very upset…Thanks!
Consider bringing a friend with you to witness the confrontation. It’ll keep things more polite and you’ll have someone to back you up if he admits to having stolen it, but then denies it to the police.
Since there really isn’t a General Question here, let’s move this to MPSIMS.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
The first thing a thief does is deny anything vehemently and get mad. They want you to get mad and go away or divert the discussion. I totally believe what you are saying about the theft. The thief must not have known how thorough you are about these things and would not notice. Pretty dumb with an exhaust system that has a peculiar sound. I presume you would also have a receipt for those custom parts you had on there that he took. I also hope he did not take that receipt from your glove compartment. Having that piece of paper in hand would be helpful and persuasive.
I recall reading a book in the 60’s on auto fraud. One case was a garage in downtown NYC. The couple told the attendant they would be gone to dinner and a play for the evening. When she felt sick, they went back for their car. The attendant gave them the run-around; traffic jam on floor 5, etc. Finally they got a police officer, went up to the 5th floor, and there was a crew frantically stuffing the engine back into the car.
They would apparently swap nice new engines for a piece of crap; several weeks or months later, when the problems emerged and someone noticed the engine was an old junker, what are the odds the owner would think of one parking garage as the source?
If you have the receipts or the original source has records; if the other mechanic says “yes, he had this muffler” - throw the book at the guy, also report him to any state licensing authority so maybe any mechanic license he has would be taken away.
Was it just missing that part of the exhaust, or was cheaper stuff/not your stuff in its place?
I wentb through a similar experience, five years ago. My wife’s car was in the body shop (minor damage). After the car got out, my stepson drove through a puddle-and water got sucked into the engine ($1200 damage). The repair shop found that the body shop failed to replace the plastic splash shield (which keeps water from getting sucked into the engine).
We sued in small claims court and wond…fortunately.
The body shop guy lied about everything-but he got caught.
Bumping in eager anticipation as to how this plays out.
Cie1?
Yeah, I’m curious about how this turned out. This guy sounds like a real skeeve.
We had a similar case here in Michigan 20-25 years ago. GM had a particular model of car that was known for bad transmissions. There were a few transmission shops that would take in one of these for repairs, then rent the same car from Avis or Hertz or whomever for the day. They’d swap transmissions, and charge the customer for a rebuild job. The customer got a used transmission for the price of a rebuild; the rental company got a dying transmission in place of a functional one; the transmission shop made out like bandits (pun intended).
Eventually, of course, the rental companies noticed that the transmissions on cars that had gone to these shops were failing at an alarming rate, and after a couple of sting operations, the state Attorney General held their feet too the fire over it and won. Here’s hoping that you can too!
Good luck trying to prove it. He’ll simply say YOU did it and are trying to pass it off on him.
I had a similar thing with the antipollution device on my old car. The guy just stuck a spark plug in the hole which shut up the noise but of course now the car wouldn’t pass the pollution test.
The answer was “No I didn’t.” And there was no way to prove he did it.
If he did recent work (under 60 days) I would dispute the credit card charge, if you used a credit card. That way you may be able to get some of it back.
Unfortunately that’s just one of those things that happens when you are forced to rely on people for services you can’t perform and you just have to trust them
Good luck to you
I would go to the the cops. They’ll probably have to do a sting operation to catch the guy.
Someone stole the Vance & Hines exhaust system off one of my motorcycles (back when I only had one bike) in 2003.