Car repair done twice, incorrectly or unnecessarily. Who pays?

October 1, 2015 10:56 AM

The dealership says the repair done by a local shop was done incorrectly, which they must repair to their standards before proceeding. Local shop denies they did it wrong. I need an operational car. Who's ultimately on the hook for all this work?

The check engine light came on: no activity detected from an oxygen sensor. Took the car to a local mechanic, who found frayed wires between the sensor and the ECU. Mechanic repairs the wires. The check engine light returns, and the mechanic diagnoses a bad ECU, which he can't fix. I take the car to the dealership for service and they state that the wire repairs were done incorrectly and they have to replace them before they can proceed. The repair the wires, also determine that the ECU is bad, and replace it, at great cost to yours truly.

The dealership was unambiguous about the first wire repair being done incorrectly and encouraged me to get a refund from the local shop. The local shop claims that their wiring was fine. There are no compounding factors (well, beyond the general reputations of garages and dealership service departments) to suggest that either entity acted in bad faith. No one will offer a refund. I'm considering taking it up with my credit card company, but I have no way of knowing whether the mechanic did the repair incorrectly (as the dealer states) or the dealer did the repair unnecessarily (as the mechanic states). Assuming that me filing a claim will result in a chargeback, who should I file against? Or since I can't know who's right, do I just have to eat paying for the same repair twice?

posted by ndg to Work & Money (15 answers total)

I had a recent experience where I ordered something with a credit card, it was shipped to me and signed for and taken by a different person. I felt that the vendor had a responsibility to get me my item, and that either delivering it to the wrong address, or using a shipping service that doesn't ensure the recipient themselves is signing for the package is failing to meet that responsibility. In my view, the package went missing, and it was on them to replace it. They disagreed.

I had always heard that credit card companies are completely on the cardholder's side and once you file the claim, you get your money back and they do the rest. Unfortunately it was not that simple. It took several angry phone conversations and threatening my business to get them, my credit card company, to see what I think is pretty unambiguously the vendor's fault (exhibit A, proof of delivery without the address line filled out and signed by someone who isn't me, etc).

My point in telling you all this is that when you file a claim your credit card company may decide, as they did for me, that it's up to you to make your case to them. Your "case" comes down to one mechanic's word against another, and that's a difficult position to be in.
posted by tremspeed at 11:06 AM on October 1, 2015

You have to pay for the same repair twice. It sucks. I'm sorry but there's no other cost effective course of action to pursue here to prove who's right or wrong.
posted by hazyjane at 11:14 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Service places of all types are often very quick to blame other service places for bad work. "Oh, you went to that guy? Yeah, he doesn't know what he's doing... always come to us." so I wouldn't put too much stock into the dealer saying the other guy did bad work. "Incorrect wire repairs" could have just meant the local repair shop didn't use a brand name wiring harness or something.

What you could have done when the dealer pointed out the bad wiring job, is have them document what exactly was wrong with the job and then take it back to the first mechanic to fix.

I'm afraid there probably isn't too much you can do in this situation. If you take it up with your CC company you might be screwing a local mechanic who felt he did a job correctly, even though it may not have been up the the dealer's standards.
posted by bondcliff at 11:15 AM on October 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

How about asking both of them to eliminate the labor portion of the wiring repair? Both (rightly or wrongly) put in new wires that presumably cost them something. While the labor cost them too, I think that is the place they have the most room to make a concession. You will never know for sure who is right or wrong, but you could ask them both to show some good faith toward a customer.
posted by AugustWest at 11:16 AM on October 1, 2015

I was in a similar situation, a shop did a carburetor repair incorrectly. I called my credit card company, and the customer services rep said, "Hold on, we have a special unit that deals only with auto repair claims." I spoke to a person in that unit about the repair being done incorrectly, and the rep from the credit card company said, "Yes, but they did the work, so they must be paid." I went through a couple of more iterations, but the answer was the same, "They did the work, so they must be paid."

If you call your credit card company I hope you get different results.
posted by Rob Rockets at 11:21 AM on October 1, 2015

The first shop repaired the car to it's specifications--which may not have involved OEM parts--however the repair itself worked, that is if your wires were frayed they needed to be repaired.

If there wasn't any problems with the wiring the second shop insisting that they had to re-do the original repair is the one at fault here--they went ahead and redid a repair that you already paid for because they didn't like it--not because the car didn't work because of the repair. If the repair that the first shop did worked, that is it didn't cause a new problem, then the second shop is the one that took your money.

I'd work on the dealership to reverse the costs for their wire fix. They repaired something that didn't need to be repaired a second time.
posted by lester at 11:38 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is probably not going to be worth your time to pursue, but if you do decide to you are definitely going to need much more detail as to what the dealer is claiming was done incorrectly. Otherwise, this is purely he-said, she-said. Even then, the first shop is going to rightly insist that you should have brought the car back to them to fix whatever was defective in the repair, so you are unlikely to have much luck.
posted by ssg at 11:52 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Did you authorise the dealer to repair the wires they said were repaired poorly, before they did the work? If so, you owe them money for this.

Did you ask for documentation from the dealer (photos or something like that) to prove that it was done poorly the first time? If not, you are probably just out of luck, because you are arguing about something that doesn't exist anymore and that there is no record of.
posted by deadwax at 11:54 AM on October 1, 2015

Ask for documentation, even if its by email, from the dealer. Contact your bank and tell the unequivocally that the local shop charged you for something that your dealership said was wrong and they would not give you a refund. They are usually happy to demand a payment back from the shop.

Ethically this may be shady in that you have no idea who actually screwed up. But you are more likely to get your money back from the shop given that the dealer has said they are in the wrong.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:58 AM on October 1, 2015

Dealerships hate independent mechanics. Dealerships make money by using more expensive parts and more expensive labor. Unfortunately, there are times when you have to go to the dealership to get something fixed, and this was one of those times.

With that background, I don't think you have enough evidence to ethically ask your credit card company to reverse the charge to your local mechanic. He might have done a fine job.

I think this is just a case where you have to eat the cost yourself. That can happen when you go to two different service providers for the same work.
posted by alms at 12:20 PM on October 1, 2015

Regardless, make sure you let the mechanic know you'll be using a different independent mechanic from now on, and tell the dealer you'd rather drive the extra hour or whatever to the next Brand X dealership for any official service. And that you'll be happy to buy your next car from that other dealership, too.
posted by papayaninja at 12:42 PM on October 1, 2015

In a certain sense, dealerships don't do repairs--they replace.
I suspect your mechanic did a perfectly good repair to the wiring. The dealership then replaced the entire affected wiring harness. From their point of view, they couldn't continue without knowing if the wiring was OK. After they replaced the wiring harness they could then know that something was still wrong and replace the ECU.
Really, neither one is at fault. They have different styles of work and unfortunately, the dealer is usually much more expensive. I don't think you have much of a case against either of them.
I might continue to go to the independent shop. He was trying to do a repair in a reasonable way but didn't have the dealer's resources. In your case this cost more, but usually ii would cost much less.

I don't repair cars but I repair other things and I look closely at (or replace) other people's work (often for good reason).
posted by H21 at 1:13 PM on October 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yes, on second thought, I would maybe continue using the indie mechanic, though not refunding at least a bit of the labor costs seems like poor customer service/business. But dealerships have too much power, and I would do whatever I could to teach them a lesson even if it had no real effect on their bottom line.
posted by papayaninja at 1:47 PM on October 1, 2015

I would favorite H21's comment a few more times if I could, because I think he nails it: "Neither one is at fault. They have different styles of work and unfortunately, the dealer is usually much more expensive. I don't think you have much of a case against either of them."

This is akin to having a contractor do work on your house that fixes an issue but doesn't fix it in a way that is code-compliant. If you then ask the county or city to come and inspect it, they will insist that it be redone so that it is up to code, even if the initial repair "fixed" the issue.

Specifically about O2 sensors: O2 sensors are unbelievably touchy little bastards. I don't know if your car uses a narrow band or a wide band O2 sensor (wide band sensors are significantly more accurate), but in both cases it is important that the signal and ground wires be PERFECT: perfectly grounded to a specific point on the ECU, the correct gauge, and unbroken/unspliced if at all possible with the exception of OEM-approved connectors, etc. This is because the ECU is very careful in the way it measures oxygen content in the exhaust as it uses this value to adjust your air/fuel mixture, which is central to the operation of a modern fuel injected engine. This measurement is extremely precise and can be disturbed very, very easily -- hell, a small pinhole leak or broken gasket in your exhaust pipe can wreak havoc with the O2 sensor readings. This isn't like the rest of the car that uses fairly common wiring, this is wiring for an analytic sensor, and it has a separate and stricter set of requirements. Will non-OEM wires work for your O2 sensor? Yes. Is non-OEM wiring supported by the manufacturer or their dealers? No, because it introduces too many variables that the ECU would have to take into account to do its job.

Sorry you ran into this situation, but having encountered it know that neither party was wrong in the way they dealt with the wiring itself. Each is just making its repairs according to a different set of rules.
posted by mosk at 3:55 PM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for their insight. H21's comment is a really useful framework for thinking about the independent garage and dealership service models. (It's helped me realize that my priority is having repairs done "right" even at substantially greater cost.)

For anyone who's still playing along and cares about the specifics of this case, I got a callback from the dealer with more details about the issues with the wiring. There were two things they found. At the connector between the O2 sensor and the wiring to the ECM, the female pins had been bent/spread so they weren't making a consistent connection to the male pins. Fixing this resolved one of the two faults thrown by the ECM.
The other issue was the nature of the repair to the wiring between the connector and the ECM. The local shop's repair apparently involved 3-5 splices in the wires. According to the dealer, this can create too much resistance in the wiring and will lead to trouble, which is why they had to replace all the wires. They further advised that this splicing could have shorted out the O2 sensor and/or the ECM.

I have limited automotive and electrical knowledge but this passes the sniff test to me. I've asked the independent shop for their input but I'd be grateful for any informed opinions here.
posted by ndg at 7:14 AM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]