Ok folks, grab a tasty beverage, a scrumptious snack and pull up a chair...this is a tale of a SC who thought they were screwing us and their buyer, but ended up royally screwing themselves.
GG: Good Guy, potential used car buyer
SC: Needs no other intro
ASST: My cape-less but awesome assistant (NO CAPE!)
SO: Me.
BG: Most auto repair shops will do a used vehicle inspection before you purchase a used vehicle. All used vehicles need work, it's just a matter of how much work does it need vs. your intent for the vehicle. It's always a good idea to have a shop inspect a used car before you buy it, no matter what the seller says or has documented so you have a professional opinion of what you're getting into. It can save you a lot of money, time, and headaches./BG
So, GG calls us yesterday and says he is trying to purchase <brand> SUV from some folks who live near our shop and he would like us to do a checkout for him. GG says the sellers (SC) are a little weird, and hopefully won't give us any trouble, and when we're done with the inspection, please let him know, he'll give us a card over the phone, and decide from there if he'll purchase the vehicle. He doesn't care what it looks like, just that it'll run good and get him through the winter. We tell him we'll call him as soon as the car gets there, and once it's done. Hang up, and don't think anymore about it.
Get a call from him this afternoon saying he just got a call from the SC saying they just picked up the SUV from our shop, that it checks out completely with except the brakes didn't work due to a bad part which was an issue that they had already discussed. He wanted to know if the SUV had been here, and if so, what had we found because we had promised to call him as soon as it got here and he hadn't gotten a call. ASST and I looked at each other in confusion as we had not had an SUV in today for an inspection...and then the light bulb went off and we were able to piece together the story.
A younger woman came in this morning with a 1-2 yr old baby (important) this morning, saying she didn't have a lot of money for us to look at it, but it was her daily driver, a shop had recently replaced the a part on the brakes, and her brakes didn't work so well. Could we please just see if the parts replacement was the issue or something else? I told her if we could figure out in 15 min or less what was up, we wouldn't charge her (our usual spiel, helps us retain customers) otherwise it would be our usual half hour diagnostic fee. She said she couldn't afford the diagnostic fee, she didn't have that money today, but if there was anything we could do...
I'm not heartless, and no brakes and a baby in the car is a bad thing. My techs are good and can diagnose issues quickly and accurately. I told her we could at least look at the one brake issue and see if that's what was wrong. We did, found that the part was indeed broken, gave her a call to let her know, and gave her a quote to get it fixed through us. She came to pick up the car, seemed really grateful and said she would take her car to the original shop some distance away to get them to maybe make it right. I said good luck and figured we had done our good deed for the week. Not 10 min later I got the call from GG asking if we had seen the SUV...
So, if you got through all of that, SC got a free estimate on the SUV for broken brake part only, called GG and told him the car checked out perfectly except for broken brake part and said she had the documentation from us to prove it. He called us to confirm if the car had been here at all, and that's when we put 2 and 2 together and realized she was trying to scam GG into believing the car only had a minor brake issue, instead of doing the full inspection.
However, my awesome techs being the wonderful people that they are, noted several issues with the car that didn't make it on that paper, most notably a very, very bad transmission, like replace in 3k miles bad, which is probably what she was trying to avoid by not having the full inspection done.
We told him everything we found wrong with the car, advised him to run, not walk away, she lost out on the sale, and he's bringing us pizza tomorrow to say thank you.
PWNED
***PS: I know she has the paper from us to show to other potential buyers saying they had the car checked out. No where on that paper does it say inspection or used car inspection, and if other buyers rely on their word alone without checking with us, well, as PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
GG: Good Guy, potential used car buyer
SC: Needs no other intro
ASST: My cape-less but awesome assistant (NO CAPE!)
SO: Me.
BG: Most auto repair shops will do a used vehicle inspection before you purchase a used vehicle. All used vehicles need work, it's just a matter of how much work does it need vs. your intent for the vehicle. It's always a good idea to have a shop inspect a used car before you buy it, no matter what the seller says or has documented so you have a professional opinion of what you're getting into. It can save you a lot of money, time, and headaches./BG
So, GG calls us yesterday and says he is trying to purchase <brand> SUV from some folks who live near our shop and he would like us to do a checkout for him. GG says the sellers (SC) are a little weird, and hopefully won't give us any trouble, and when we're done with the inspection, please let him know, he'll give us a card over the phone, and decide from there if he'll purchase the vehicle. He doesn't care what it looks like, just that it'll run good and get him through the winter. We tell him we'll call him as soon as the car gets there, and once it's done. Hang up, and don't think anymore about it.
Get a call from him this afternoon saying he just got a call from the SC saying they just picked up the SUV from our shop, that it checks out completely with except the brakes didn't work due to a bad part which was an issue that they had already discussed. He wanted to know if the SUV had been here, and if so, what had we found because we had promised to call him as soon as it got here and he hadn't gotten a call. ASST and I looked at each other in confusion as we had not had an SUV in today for an inspection...and then the light bulb went off and we were able to piece together the story.
A younger woman came in this morning with a 1-2 yr old baby (important) this morning, saying she didn't have a lot of money for us to look at it, but it was her daily driver, a shop had recently replaced the a part on the brakes, and her brakes didn't work so well. Could we please just see if the parts replacement was the issue or something else? I told her if we could figure out in 15 min or less what was up, we wouldn't charge her (our usual spiel, helps us retain customers) otherwise it would be our usual half hour diagnostic fee. She said she couldn't afford the diagnostic fee, she didn't have that money today, but if there was anything we could do...
I'm not heartless, and no brakes and a baby in the car is a bad thing. My techs are good and can diagnose issues quickly and accurately. I told her we could at least look at the one brake issue and see if that's what was wrong. We did, found that the part was indeed broken, gave her a call to let her know, and gave her a quote to get it fixed through us. She came to pick up the car, seemed really grateful and said she would take her car to the original shop some distance away to get them to maybe make it right. I said good luck and figured we had done our good deed for the week. Not 10 min later I got the call from GG asking if we had seen the SUV...
So, if you got through all of that, SC got a free estimate on the SUV for broken brake part only, called GG and told him the car checked out perfectly except for broken brake part and said she had the documentation from us to prove it. He called us to confirm if the car had been here at all, and that's when we put 2 and 2 together and realized she was trying to scam GG into believing the car only had a minor brake issue, instead of doing the full inspection.
However, my awesome techs being the wonderful people that they are, noted several issues with the car that didn't make it on that paper, most notably a very, very bad transmission, like replace in 3k miles bad, which is probably what she was trying to avoid by not having the full inspection done.
We told him everything we found wrong with the car, advised him to run, not walk away, she lost out on the sale, and he's bringing us pizza tomorrow to say thank you.
PWNED
***PS: I know she has the paper from us to show to other potential buyers saying they had the car checked out. No where on that paper does it say inspection or used car inspection, and if other buyers rely on their word alone without checking with us, well, as PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
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