My Story

I trusted a mechanic who ripped me off.

When I was in college my car broke down. I was living in a small town 150 miles away from home and didn’t know any of the mechanics in the area. I chose a shop based off of who had good reviews and honestly, who had a student discount. What was supposed to be a straightforward transaction quickly turned sideways.

The first red flag came when the shop ignored me and would only contact my husband, even after having been told multiple times that it was my car and to contact me.

An expensive problem.

The shop’s diagnosis was that my car needed a new cylinder head, so I bit the bullet and they put in a brand new head even though that was way more expensive of a repair than I could afford at the time. When they told me it was fixed I picked it up, got the bill to the tune of well over $2,500, and quickly figured out the problem was not actually fixed. My friends helped me limp my vehicle back to the shop and I continued the process of going around and around with them. The shop kept upping the bill and telling me they were doing things, but my car still wasn’t running properly.

The truth comes out.

One of my friends is very much a car guy and even from the little information I was able to tell him he knew something shady was happening. With a basic Google search he was able to find the most common issue with my type of vehicle and the symptoms of that issue, which matched exactly what my car was doing. He and one of our other friends went to the shop with me to talk to the mechanic. It wasn’t until the shop manager was confronted by men that he admitted he was charging me for work that hadn’t been done (and they hadn’t intended to do). At one point the manager set my keys down on the counter so my friend snatched them, threw them to the friend we had brought along and we went out and moved my car off the lot. We had to actually steal my vehicle off the lot before this mechanic stopped playing games.

We were able to limp my car to a shop just down the road where they were able to diagnose the issue as exactly what my friend had found online. The part cost less than $30 and it was a no tool fix, meaning we were able to fix it in the parking lot. It is highly likely this was the only thing that had been wrong with my vehicle the whole time and we fixed it in an hour for the cost of a tank of gas.

An invaluable support system.

Thank goodness I had friends help me find out the truth and steal my car back. Because of them I was able to find out what was really wrong with my car and didn’t get stuck with another ridiculous bill (that as a student I definitely could not have afforded) for work that was never actually done. The whole situation got under my skin and made me start asking questions. Why is it so hard, as a woman, to be taken seriously in the car industry? How wide spread are issues like this? What would have happened if I hadn’t had my friends to help? What do women who don’t have “a guy” do? I started digging into the statistics and was disgusted with what I found.