Ok, before someone gets on me for "defending Joe" let me clarify that I'm not even from your time zone. I'm at the other coast.
Since it was getting where people are posting his address and exposing information about his family, maybe his family retained a lawyer and perhaps the boy, Joe is taking advise for once and not posting after the lawyer told him to STFU and not post a thing.
It's one thing to hand the keys over.. quite another to legally transfer the title, so if it was found by Joe's family's lawyer or the bank's lawyer, they might just claw the title back, then repo the car back
I'm not a lawyer, and even if one of the guest posters is a lawyer, these matters are so jurisdiction specific that he'd have to be familiar with all the rules in Florida.
Whatever Joe did was beyond his mom's credit union's control and the CU would be retarded to say "oh well" and chalk up $17,000 and write it off.
Financing company requires their lessee's are required to have full coverage on their financed vehicles naming them as the payee if the "collateral" is destroyed in an accident/theft... and there's a good reason.
It's going to get passed onto other customers through higher interest rate and fees.
So by whatever conduct of lessee's son, a.k.a. SCP_Celica, the mechanic, importguy1208 is apparently getting stiffed, but there was a poor business decision involved.
Think about it. Hospitals don't hold "a raffle" in the ER to cover a defaulted ER bills and Chase don't sell raffle tickets to cover defaulted CC bills. I think that a "charity" for a for-profit purpose just won't go well.
I'm not sure what will turn out of this, but I find it entirely BS that the innocent financing bank pays everything, including the full profit of the mechanic that resulted partly due to poor judgment of the shop and their lawyers have every right to challenge the smallest technical fouls.
I'm guessing the bank will challenge the validity of the $16,000 claim as well and how it ended up in the shop for 4 1/2 month without a substantial written authorization.
I can't say if the price is fair or not, but only fair if the defense side challenges this claim. Like, if you go to Jiffy Lube, for $22.95 oil change, then authorize them to "check tire pressure" for an amount exceeding $10 and you get told you owe them $250 and they're not releasing your car until it's paid, you're going to challenge it on basis that it's clearly unreasonable. What bank wouldn't challenge a work exceeding the current market value of a vehicle?
According to the linkback "http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/14/carsumer-advocacy-16-year-old-tries-to-bilk-shop-out-of-16k-jo/"
And this will turn into "your word against mine" situation. Even though "verbal" agreement is technically valid and when charges are unreasonable, it's likely to be challenged to a higher burden of proof. Did Joe really mean "yeah, charge me whatever you think is fair, no limit" ?