Legal advice against business. (Mechanic)?

[SadPoet]

The Story starts on July 21st, I took my transmission into a local shop, where he offered to open it up and see what was wrong for free. He would then tell me what the cost to repair it would be, or I could just reclaim the transmission and go from there. There was no Consent for a Repair. He told me this process would take 1 day and he'd call me the next day on the 22nd. Well, after attempting to contact him, and not hearing anything back from him, I was finally able to reach him on the 29th. "You wouldn't believe last week it was so hectic"...sure...he then proceeded to tell me he was not done checking it out. 2 days go by...he calls and informs me that the cost to repair 2 synchronizer rings(which can be found for $14 ea) will come out to 950 dollars with tax. I told him, I'd need to think about it, but I probably cannot afford that repair. He called me the next day saying he would take some sort of payment plans if I didn't have money, and all I'd need to do is bring $200 by his shop and he'd get started. Again I told him that I did not know if I wanted to do the repair. The Following day I attempted contacting him no answer, I went to his shop, no one was there. This went on for 2 weeks until Aug 13th, when I finally met him outside of his Shop. I approached him and said I was here to pick up the transmission, he then started saying "its not done you needed to bring a deposit"...I said well I don't want to do the repair...he then says "well its too late I already did it and have it all full of new parts, you need to bring me a check cause you're not getting it"...well, how much is it and can I see it?..."No you can't see it"...well I don't believe you've done anything to it, cause you just stated I needed to give you money to get started, and it suddenly jumped to now its done..."get off my property, I am gonna sue you be ready for legal fees + cost of the repair"...at which point he became very aggressive and irate. Upon arriving home I filed with the BBB go figure he has been in business less than 2 years, and has had "A minimum of 5 complaints"...a generic message on BBB, and when you check to see how they've turned out, he is nonresponsive to all of them. Upon googling his business, I discovered he has outstanding lawsuits being pressed against him by another business that he bought used transmissions from with bogus checks, oh and get this they also tried to have him repair some transmission for them to make up the cost...well he sent them transmissions back with used parts in them, writing them off as brand new.

This guy should
A. Not have a business License. and B. Probably be in jail for theft and running a chop shop.
I should add that I had witness's with me, when I dropped it off, and attempted to pick it up.
Well I offered to pay, I asked him how much, and he told me to get off his property and that I'd find out. Referencing Legal Action.

A Re-manufactured transmission of the same model also costs 950 dollars coincidentally. He also told me that these synchronizers were $450 and that the labor was 400, and the tax made up the rest.

So he was not honest with the parts cost to begin with, most likely his fictional random number he generated trying to scam another person.

 

[thingsrgettingbetter]

i work on alternators and starters. the parts are cheap i can get parts to fix most any kind of alternator or starter. the parts are cheap.trick is the labor involved in putting them in.
so $14 for a part is the cheapest part. the transmission would have to be removed and reinstalled and the trans would have to be disassembled and reassembled so the cost of putting the part in is the expensive part. it might take me 4 or five hours to rebuild an alternator.
to me the sounds of it is that you should have taken it to a different shop. sometimes people want to be cheap so they take their vehicle to the cheapest person in town and then complain that it wasn't done exactly how they wanted. i pride myself on my workmanship and i am also the highest price in town. so you get what you pay for. one man shops are only good if you know the person or have been recommended to them by a good friend.
best thing to do is chalk it up as a learning lesson pay the bill(get a loan from a bank if necessary.) get your vehicle back and let everyone you know how horrible an experience you had with this business. word of mouth is more powerful than any ad in the newspaper. it takes seven customers to make up for one lost customer.