Originally Posted by milkman

I really don't know where to begin on this, I did offer to make everything right, and my offer was unacceptable to her.

This is the greatest nightmare of everyone involved, the shop owner, the car owner, everyone. My mailbox is full of hate mail from CF members, and I understand that. My side of the story is that I tried to make everything right, and Melissa chose to go through her insurance company and take me out of the picture of being a part of the solution.

My offer to Melissa, which was declined, was that she take the approximately $40k settlement for the vehicle from my insurance company, and release the vehicle to me so that I could remove the modifications to the car and those that were salvagable could be reinstalled by us on another car, those that were not I could repair or replace to as new condition. If she had cooperated this could have all had a better ending.

Instead she demanded that she file with her insurance company (I've never heard how much they offered) and that NO parts be reused, and that she choose another shop to do all the work and some of the parts (like the sound system for example) be upgraded at the same time. Carolina Auto Masters would pay for all parts and labor. I'm just not going to pay another shop to do the work on the car, and provide all new parts when the original car had much that was reusable.

When we were in constant contact in December, Melissa assured me that her insurance company had not evaluated the car, while in fact, she had already released the car to them and it had been moved somewhere else. I have not spoken with Melissa since that time. I would have to assume that the car has long since been sold as salvage and the reusable parts gone with it.

If the car is still impounded somewhere, I'd still be more than happy to take the parts off it, transfer those to a car that Melissa provides (from the settlement from her insurance company) that are in reuseable condition, repair or replace those that are not and make everything right. But Melissa chose another route, and that was her choice. I'd hoped her insurance company would settle for enough money for her build the car back just like it was. I assume that didn't happen, but have no way to know. Melissa has not contacted me since saying she would let me know when her insurance company got in touch with her, so I've been given no chances since my last offer to do anything more for her.

From the mail I've recieved she has gotten way more than the value of the vehicle and modifications out of CAM already via lost business. And that total will continue to grow, and her nightmare and my nightmare will continue with neither of us finding a way to wake up and it all just be a bad dream.

I've been sick about what happened, I hate that it happened, and I really hoped that my offer to make everything right had been accepted by Melissa.

I do wish her the best of luck dealing with her insurance company,
-jeff

Originally Posted by John

for those that didn't read all the way to find the shop owner's response:



Now, as a shop owner myself of 7+ years, of course a few cars get damaged here and there - its a numbers game. Sometimes you fuck up and its your fault, other times you didn't do anything and bad luck strikes. In either case, my response was always the same: if the car was in my possession, it was my responsibility. The 3 total cars that had minor damage to them were all fixed on my dime - insurance companies were NEVER involved.

For some reason, i'm not sure why, shops always try to scrounge in this area. This is the very worst place to scrounge, b/c one unhappy customer can easily cripple a shop's reputation for years. There's a couple of shops around here that still haven't figured that out, and thus, there's quite a few shops here with the "shady" label. Do what it takes the make the customer happy, so long as they are being reasonable in their requests (which i believe she was in this case).

Customer service appears to be a long lost art, and so has personal responsibility.