Endress Automotive Unethical Illegal Shysters Woodleaf North Carolina

It is not true that they did not know a new motor had been put in the car.  In my first conversation I was completely forthcoming with the entire story of the new motor, how the car had previously been sitting for over a year, and how we only had the car back for an hour before the transmission failed.

Here is the big question, if you are a mechanic and a customer calls you saying, "This is what is wrong with my car." Do you take their word for it and just do what they say, or do you check out their vehicle first to make sure that is the actual issue before ordering parts and moving forward?

Yes, I said I needed a transmission because that is what I thought I needed, but I am not a mechanic.  Why would they spend time and engergy tearing down the parts car, while my car was on site, until they actually looked at what my vehicle needed?  Two reasons why this makes no sense to me:

1. By looking at my vehicle first,if I did need a transmission, maybe I also needed a transfer case, etc. and could have gotten more parts from that car sold. OR

2. By looking at my vehicle first, they could have seen that even though I didn't need a transmission, I did need the AC compressor, the heater core and the hose junction, and we could have done business on those parts instead.  I really wish they had done this.

By assuming that they did not need to look at the vehicle first, they cost themselves money.  Money that BY LAW I am not responsible for paying them.  I never signed any consent, and the parts car was not my property.  The mechanics took it upon themselves to do that work first.  That was their decision, making them responsible for that work.

I felt bad that they ran with my assumption that it was the transmission, that is why I wanted to offer $100/hour for their time and a $50 restocking fee... which they turned down!  But if I could diagnose what was wrong with a vehicle, I wouldn't need them.  Shoot, we could put all the shops out of business if we all knew exactly what was wrong with our vehicles.

Here's the bottom line, these people made a bad decision to pull the parts before looking at the vehicle to be fixed.  That is unfortunate.  But as the owner of the vehicle I am not financially responsible to pay for that mistake and it is unethical and illegal for them to try to make me pay for their poor judgement.  I really am sorry they took a loss, but they should have done things in a logical order.

Unfortunately, logic was not applied, and when I wouldn't stand for being charged for their mistake, they were obviously upset.  But the law is the law, and you cannot charge a customer for work done to another vehicle.  PERIOD.  I still paid twice as much as I should have had to and they left my car with a dead battery and the key in the ignition for it to be picked up.  Classy.  Like a bunch of children who didn't get their way.  They could have had good will and word of mouth on their side, instead, they have this.

Like I stated in my original post.  Save yourself the grief and drive the Salisbury or Mocksville.

Wanted to clarify information of Volvo customer.  This customer called wanting to purchase a transmission out of a wrecked vehicle.  After a conversation about the charge for the transmission without her taking this part out of the wrecked vehicle, she decided that should would pay this shop to remove the old transmission for her and install it into her vehicle.  She agreed to pay $1200 for this service.  After the transmission was removed from the wrecked vehicle, she requested that we check the transfer case and see if she needed that part off the wrecked vehicle as well.  This is when we asked her why she thought she needed this part. 

She explained that her other mechanic had just installed a used engine and when it was delivered to her the transmission was not working.  We were unaware of this prior to the removal of the wrecked vehicle's transmission.  We investigated her vehicle and found that the previous mechanic had made a mistake when intalling the engine.  We contacted her and explained the situation.  She did not need the transmission and we had repaired her vehicle without using the transmission that we removed from the wrecked vehicle.  She could pay the $1200 and keep the parts that were removed or she could pay for the time our mechanic had spent on her behalf which would be $705 plus cost of NCSI.  She just couldn't understand. 

The wrecked vehicle was the storage and the ability to prove to other buyers that the used parts worked.  Now these parts were removed and since we are not a junk yard, we had no where to store these parts.  We would not have removed these parts if she had not agreed to it.  We could have easily took her $1200 and given her vehicle back to her.  She would have never known that we did not install the other transmission.  We were being honest and we were trying to be fair to both her and the business.  We ended up taking a major loss on this repair.  We know have used parts that can not be proven to work which means we will most likely never sell them.  We lost $300 due to labor not paid for and now she is posting things against our business.  This whole issue is making an honest mechanic wonder why.