One of the least trusted occupations is used car salesman, but an important variation on that is automobile mechanics. The big question always is not only is your mechanic knowledgeable so that the work is done right, and charging you a fair price, but is he or she honest to the extent that you actually need the work you are told you need. Unfortunately, most car owners are not very knowledgeable about their car and I certainly fit into that category. It would be great if we could take an automobile repair course and have a garage with a rack in it and a good place to ecologically get rid of old oil and grease. If we had the time and interest we could do our own car repairs. But that is not practical or of interest for the vast majority of people, therefore we are mostly at the mercy of an automobile mechanic.
I really love my car, a 2012 Infiniti M37, which I bought used. It had previously been owned by a person who leased it and followed all the maintenance schedules perfectly. To me, it was essentially a brand new car with little mileage and selling at a good price--it was everything I wanted.
I, too, have religiously followed the maintenance schedule, alternating between having the car serviced at Infiniti of Valencia where I bought the car, and Infiniti of Van Nuys which is only a twenty-minute drive from where I live instead of Valencia, which s an hour's drive away. I liked both dealerships fine and was "sharing the wealth", choosing to get routine services from either one of them, until one morning after I had driven all the way up there and had a confirmed appointment for servicing, Infinite of Valencia turned me away, saying that they had too many cars to service at that time, I would need to come back another day. At this point, that hour-long drive to that dealership suddenly was an issue with me and decided to settle on going only to the near-by Infiniti of Van Nuys.
In mid-October, I was going on a road trip through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. My next car service was due a couple of weeks prior to this trip, so the timing was perfect for having the car serviced and checked out prior to this trip. Everything was in great shape and the car was good to go for this great trip.
It was a really good trip and my car was a dream, performing perfectly in every way. Autumn was a great season for a trip like this. Previously when I was employed at Curtis School, trips were limited to the times I had off, which were two weeks of spring break, my three week summer vacation, and two weeks of Christmas break.
I got back at home on October 20th and got back into my normal routine.
November 1, I went to Whole Foods of Tarzana, parked in a section of their underground parking lot where you park facing the exit route instead of parking toward a wall. So as I walked by my parked car to head to the store, I happened to see that due to the "light your way" delay that my headlights hadn't quite turned off yet and I could see that I had a front headlight out. I wonder how long that that been like that, perhaps throughout my entire trip? At any rate, I thought that was odd...I don't think I have ever had a headlight go out on a car; that's not a normal event. And good thing, too, because replacement headlamps for that car cost about $200.00 (I later learned).
I made an appointment to have that headlamp replaced at Infiniti of Van Nuys at 7:00 AM on Monday, November 4. I was the first customer there and when my service writer arrived, he took me into his office and we discussed the service that I needed...essentially what should have been a quick, in and out replacement of the bulb. The serviced writer wrote up the order, adding on a free Express Service Multi-Point Inspection, something that always sounds good, but that I should have learned by now is actually an ominous thing and usually license for what amounts to armed robbery. But it sounded good...after all, who doesn't want their car checked out to make sure that it continues to run in tiptop shape? After all, as I said, I love that car and I want it to remain in great shape.
I was directed to sit down in the waiting room and help myself to the coffee machine with its various types of coffee choices, and the various sweet snacks.
After a while, the service writer came over to me and said that he wanted to take me into the workshop to show me something on my car. Now that, of course, is even more ominous than the "free Express Service Multi-Point Inspection", and even worse, he said that the mechanic had said to him, "What you will see will blow your mind."
I really hadn't come in there that day to have my mind blown.
The mechanic had the hood up, of course, and everything seemingly laid bare. Since these modern day luxury cars are basically all buttoned up and the engine compartment beautifully covered, usually all you see under the hood are the places to measure the amount of oil and check the level of the coolant. I had never actually seen before whatever was deep inside there.
The mechanic directed my attention to an "animal dropping" down low in the engine compartment. It was smooth and greenish and a bit smaller than what a dog might leave on your lawn. I didn't really know what to make of that, but the mechanic said, "I think this was a raccoon that can gotten in here. Or some other largish animal." I thought, well that is cute, poor thing; it had made me think of a friend long ago telling me about how a cat had gotten injured under his car's hood--it had climbed in there to get out of the cold and when he started that car that morning, the cat's tail got pulled into the fan belt. I was thinking that it was a good thing that when I started my car that no animal parts got pulled into the fan belt.
The mechanic then showed me what he thought were footprints, showing me that the animal had walked all over the place in there, and dirty dried discoloration on various pipes and tubes, and said, "Those are the evidence of several leaks. It looks like that raccoon must have bit into various hoses, seeking out the water, or the antifreeze, which has a sweet taste and is deadly poison. Your raccoon would not have lived very long. Your radiator, too, has leaks, and will have to be replaced." The whole radiator? I thought....that raccoon must have been voracious. The mechanic said, "I will have to look all over to see what all damage it made, but I can tell you this, he sure did chew up this engine compartment."
What a shock all that was--I had never even heard of such a thing as this. I figured that this must have happened when I was on my trip. What picture came up in my mind was my car sitting there like a showplace right next to the entrance to the Mountain Lodge, the elegant hotel I was stayed in in the mountains above the gorgeous ski resort of Telluride (this was off-season, the ending few days of their summer season; snow would come in November), right close to the beginning of the Telluride Gondola that takes passengers down to the town of Telluride. Normally with their required valet parking they took the cars around to a garage underneath the hotel, but mine they kept up there on top. I now regret that; the car might have been safer in the garage below. Of course, I am only guessing that the raccoon got in my car there, because that was the coldest and most forested of all the places I had parked the car on my trip. Holbrook, Arizona had been all desert; Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico were more urban, and even the motel in the small town of Green River, Utah did not seem to be an area filled with lots of wild animals. I certainly had never had anything like this happen to my car parked where I live in Tarzana...I hope not because I don't want to go through something like this again!
The service writer asked me to wait in the waiting room again and he would then present me with the work order after the mechanic finished his inspection.
When that time came, the service writer shoved under my nose a three-page work order and pointed out where I was to sign, indicating my approval for these repairs. I glanced at the various things that the raccoon had damaged. I saw something about power steering fluid and something else about the radiator and cooling leaks, even engine oil leaks. I did happen to see an odd-ball entry, "4 wheel alignment", and I said to the service writer, "What could the raccoon have done to the wheels", to which the service writer responded, "Oh, that was just some other thing the mechanic noticed, the wheels were out of alignment. Left like this, your tires would wear out much quicker." Well, okay, okay, that seems reasonable.
What interested me the most was the grand total on the service order: $4,730.67! That raccoon had managed to do nearly $5,000 worth of damage to my car! How horrible was this to have happen...and I was feeling especially poor, because I had also gotten a diagnosis from my dentist about a tooth of mine that will need to be extracted and replaced with an implant, a $6,784 cost. So one day you are fine and happy, and then the next day you turn around and find out that you will be owing an unexpected $11,514.67, not good news when you are attempting to live off of your retirement funds.
I signed the damned work order and the service writer said it would take two days to do all the repairs, they would have a guy drive me home.
Once I was home, I decided to look up this thing about rodents going in under your hood, was this really a thing? And according to several web sites, it definitely is a thing, and quite a damaging and expensive thing. Rats are the most common villain, and they are especially a problem in rural areas where there are lots of rats. They can really destroy things under the hood. Some car manufacturers have been sued due to this, since they have moved over to using soy coated tubes, which cost less for car manufacturers, but are more vulnerable to rat damage. Well, I certainly wouldn't want to regularly have to make $5,000 payments due to frequent rodent damage.
However I then learned reading bout this on-line that some automobile insurance policies, if you have comprehensive insurance, will cover rodent damage. Wow, here was a ray of hope! I telephoned GEICO, my insurance company, and found out that my policy does cover rodent damage! There is a $500 deductible, but I sure would be happy to have to pay only a tenth of my repair costs. And the man on the phone also told me that making this claim would not raise my premium rates, as due to California insurance law, they cannot raise rates for damages that the ensured did not cause. So everything about all this was turning into not being so bad after all!
The guy at GEICO said that normally they would send an insurance adjuster out to check the damages, but in this case, since the repairs were already in the process of being repaired, they would not require that, but that I would send to them the invoice and a proof of my payment and they would look at that. I hope they weren't lying to me about "skipping the adjuster" piece.
As the end of the second day of the shop working on my car, I telephoned the service writer and asked if the car was ready yet. He said that it was not finished yet, they they would need it for a third day, he hoped this was not an inconvenience. If I wanted, they would loan me a car. I figured that was more hassle than it was worth. The only problem for me was that the next day I had both an appointment at the cardiologist and following that, a consultation at my dentist's office. This meant that I would have to be walking to these appointments...but both places weren't that too far away and besides, I could use the exercise. However, it did add to a certain inconvenience.
Also in that phone call with the service writer, I told him about how my automobile insurance would cover these repairs, so would he, or the mechanic, specially mark out on the final bill all the repairs that had come from the rodent damage. I said that I had seen a repair item on the invoice that was not due to the rodent, and there maybe another item, so I don't want the insurance company to be confused, so please clearly mark that which came from rodent damage. He seemed to understand what I was asking.
Very late in the day I got a phone call from the service writer, telling me the car was ready, when would be a good time for me to have a car come pick me up. I said that I was ready now, so he transferred me to somebody else, a woman, who told me the name of a woman who would come pick me up, and said the vehicle was going to be a black Prius and she quickly recited a license plate number. She asked me what my address was and I gave it to her. Lately, when I am stressed, I mix up my home address number with my former work address number--both of them are burned in my brain but which one is which is sometimes mixed up when I recite it (getting old is a bitch). When I went outside to wait for the ride to come, I began to worry that I might have given the wrong address. Every time a car passed and it wasn't for me, I worried. I also realized that I had no idea what a Prius looks like from the front, I have only seen them from the back. So as it was getting later and later, I was getting more and more stressed.
Finally it was way past time for the driver to have arrived, so I pulled out my cell phone to call the service writer to ask him if the driver had trouble finding me, would they call him to verify the address? However, I was unable to do that because his voicemail was full. Then I noticed on my phone that I received texts from LYFT. While it was an Infiniti of Van Nuys driver who drove me home on Monday, to pick me up this time, they had ordered a LYFT car for me without telling me that detail. If I had known that, and known that I could communicate with the LYFT driver, I would have discovered that she was not able to find me and it was my fault...I had given her the numbers of my former work address, but the correct name of the street. I could have then given her the correct number by text (along with a huge embarrassed apology), but since I hadn't even known that it was LYFT coming, that didn't happen. So we had to start all over on this, but at least this time I gave the correct address. This time it would be a male driver, and in some other color and make of car with such and such license number.
This time it was now very dark and I could hardly see the kind of cars that passed, and there was a constant stream of them since now was deep into commute time, which, of course, would also slow down the LYFT driver. This waiting out there was making me more and more uncomfortable and angry over this whole thing.
Then I pulled out my cell phone and saw a message from the LYFT driver, telling me that was now here! He was now here? Where? At this time, there was not a soul on the street, only me standing there on the curb where I had been standing for an hour by now. Now I was full-on angry and called the LYFT driver's phone number and shouted, "Why are you telling me you are here when there is NOBODY anywhere near here?" He responded, "Because I AM here!" "WHERE ARE YOU?" I yelled. He said,"I am in the parking lot where you told me to wait." I said, "WHAT parking lot, I didn't tell anybody anything, I have been standing out here on the curb at the front of this apartment for over an hour." I guess that then he decided to slowly drive down the street and I then heard a voice in the dark saying my first name, "Tom! Tom! Tom!" and when I peering into the dark, I could now see a car across the street from me with a man calling my name through his open car window.
I crossed the street, checked the license plate number, and then got into the car, sitting up front with him. He said, to me, "I was just doing what I was told to do." "Well, I don't understand why they told you to wait in a parking lot, the only parking that could be you could not get into, it is gated, and besides, I was waiting out here in the front where the address can be seen." So he calmed down, as I did, and then for a while, the ride was totally silent, which felt weird. So I started talking with him, telling him about my rodent damage, and ultimately I think we had a pretty good conversation on our way to the repair shop.
I went inside the service writer's office and we talked about the messed up LYFT ride and then we went over to the cashier for me to pay the bill. I noticed that the bill did not have the raccoon damage repairs marked at all, as I had asked...which didn't surprise me. I mentioned this to the service writer and asked him if he could do that for me. He said that only the mechanic would know which was which, but he was gone for the day. I said that I could probably figure them out and mark the right ones myself once I was home.
However, when I got home, I realized that I could not make that determination, so the next morning, I called the service writer and said that it was imperative that I get the rodent repair charges clearly indicated. He told me that the service writer was off that whole day, but they would both call me the next morning.
Next morning, I did get a call from both of them and I explained to the mechanic what I wanted. And he said, "There was only one item, the headlamp." I said, "What do you mean, 'only the headlamp', what about all this other stuff--the radiator leak and replacement at a cost of $1,905.44, you said that came from the rodent; what about the power steering fluid, what about the oil leak that required $973.13 worth of repairs?" He said, "None of those other things were caused by rodent damage, only the headlamp; all the other repairs are things that needed to be done that were discovered during my inspection."
For a moment I was speechless. The phone was completely silent as my brain churned inside my head. I had approved a $4,730.67 repairs based on this rodent that presumably had "chewed up this engine compartment", only to find out that the only actual rodent damage was just this headlight? That hardly would even be worth filing a claim with my insurance company that required I pay a $500 deductible.
Then I started shouting at them both, calling them crooks and liars and they sure did lose me as a customer, that I would have kept on having them keep my beautiful car in great shape even if it did cost more than an independent mechanic, but now I can't trust them at all, never again, and now i realize how they really work, once the warranty comes to an end, they realize that most of their customers stop going there and finding more affordable options elsewhere, so you make it a practice to cheat your customers one last time in a big way before you lose them for good. Well, I haven't decided what I will do about this yet, a law suit maybe, certainly damaging reviews on Yelp, but during what surely will be the final few months of your employment at that place, I will give you some advice, and that is NEVER NEVER NEVER tell a customer that a repair is based on set of facts, such as in this case, "all this rodent damage", and then sneak in thousands of dollars of fraudulent other repairs that they WOULD NOT agree to having if they knew the complete truth.
The service writer was begging me to understand that all the other things needed to be done, they had taken me out there to see the damage, surely I understood. I said that all of this was presented as being under the umbrella of the rodent damage, not "other things" that you "discovered" that I "needed". "How could I possible have normally needed all these things? I was already IN here one a month ago, having a complete good bill of health, and then now suddenly I needed a NEW RADIATOR (almost $2,000 cost), had a huge OIL LEAK in the engine (almost $1,000 in cost), needed a NEW BATTERY (almost $200) and then a bunch of other stuff, like a new POWER STEERING KIT?" I simply could not believe that all that was legitimate. I have owned cars for the past 54 years, never once have I ever had a cascade of repairs happen like this. This whole thing was an out and out scam, I can't see it as anything else.
We all hung up with the service writer still trying to convince me that all the repairs were legitimate, that my business was very precious to them and they didn't want to lose it, and they always meant to do the best for me. And the trouble is that that may be correct, I just don't know! The car is driving now like it is brand new...well, and sure, it ought to feel like that, they replaced so many components under the hood! But one thing is clear and they can't get around that, and that is that everything I authorized was based on being told that some animal had gotten in under the hood and chewed everything up. Before slipping a work order under my nose to sign, the service writer should have said, "Well, the mechanic has done a thorough investigation and it ends up that the only damage done by the rodent was the headlight. Here, let me take you back out to the shop to show you all the other things on this list and why they are on there." With all that stuff, they would have had to "sell" me on the need for those repairs. Even now, a week later, I still can't believe it--new radiator, new battery, new power steering, big oil leak, all at once and suddenly? Everything was in fine shape after the service I had there a month prior. I just don't buy it.
I did a Yelp search on Infiniti of Van Nuys and it is a sad picture, let me tell you. This is one of those Yelps where all the reviews are a mix of 5 stars and 1 star, mostly 1 stars. I believe the 5 star reviews are from those customers who are still on the warranty, so they get to have luxury service and pay next to nothing. Then the warranty ends, all of a sudden, all the reviews are 1 star and nothing but complaints.
There even was a review from a customer who said he brought it in with some problem and was told that he had rodent damage requiring $9,000 worth of repairs, Instead of going along with that, he took his car to another shop that found the answer to his problem, told him he had no rodent damage, and the repair for his problem was only a few hundred dollars. So in this guy's case, he didn't even have the claimed rodent damage! This makes me wonder in my case if I even had the rodent damage my self, was the scam that thorough, to the extent of the mechanic putting the animal dropping in there himself? Well, I won't go quite that far....
Interestingly, I looked up the Yelp reviews for Infiniti of Valencia, and they basically have nothing but five-star reviews. Also, I searched an independent mechanic who specializes in Infiniti and found one that is in a convenient location and has nothing but five-star reviews for his shop, was well. So apparently there are some good places to go for service of my Infiniti.
What drives me crazy about this whole thing was feeling that I was badly scammed, yet not really being able to be sure that I was. I was done wrong by their making me think that everything that needed to be fixed was under the umbrella of the rodent damage and therefore I wasn't given a chance to separately evaluate the validity of the other repairs. But as to maybe the other repairs were legitimate and I would have agreed to them if only I had been specifically shown their damage and given the chance to make an informed decision. That makes me very sad; that what might actually have been good and thorough caring mechanics had their reputations besmirched due to an error in or failure of good communication.
