Sometime in early April, the carburetor on my truck started acting up. In order to save a few dollars, we decided to buy a rebuilt carburetor from. It cost us $170 instead of $220 for a factory re-manufactured Holley carb.

Once the “rebuilt” carb was installed in my truck, it would not properly adjust. Every time it would start to work right, the next day it would be wrong again. We took the truck to two local mechanics who checked on it, and said that everything had been done properly to adjust the carburetor. It *should* have been working right. On their recommendation,  we took my truck to another local mechanic and have him fix it.  He had to replace to choke, accelerator pump and the fuel filter on the allegedly rebuilt carb. This added another $210 of parts and labor to the total price. Last month, it finally quit all together.

I brought the carb back to the shop wanting a refund.  First the guy told me he didn’t do cash refunds. Then he offered to replace it with another one he had laying around. When I told him I didn’t want a replacement, and didn’t want him to fix it, I just wanted the money back, he told me it was out of warranty. Despite the fact that there was nothing on the receipt saying all sales were final, and his web site says all of their work comes with a one year warranty, he just said that was his policy.

Then, he looks at the receipt again, because he doesn’t believe me that it doesn’t say “90 day warranty.” The he says he doesn’t remember selling it and did we even pay for it. In addition to the hand written receipt, there was a credit card receipt stapled to it. How could it not be paid for?  Did we break into the place in the middle of the night, have handwriting experts forge his writing and make us a receipt and then forge a credit card receipt? We must be criminal masterminds! Or really, we would be morons because that’s way too much work to save $170.

Once again, he tried to talk me out of wanting my money back. Despite telling him that three other mechanics had looked at it and that we had to replace parts on the carb because he didn’t, he wanted to blame it on something else on my truck. He said the lines must be bad. I said no, we replaced them. He said there must be dirt from the fuel tank. I said no, we checked that. I told him the whole list of everything that had been replaced on my truck and on the carb.  After that, he said I should wait until he was done working on the carb in front of him and then he would take a look at mine. He said there must be dirt in it, and that is not his fault.

Once again, I told him that I didn’t want it fixed by him, I just wanted my money back. Again he offered to replace the carb I had with another one that he had rebuilt. He said if it didn’t work right, I could just bring my truck in. Yeah right! Was this guy insane? I wouldn’t let him work on my truck!

We went back through the whole scenario again, and he told me that I needed to have my boyfriend call him and talk to him about it. When I told him I would just have him come up to the shop instead, he started yelling at me saying that I probably bought a P.O.S. carb from

AutoZone and gave them the carb he rebuilt for the core charge and that I wanted him to pay for my mistake!At this point I was so absolutely furious I couldn’t see straight. I went out to the truck and called the boyfriend to meet me.

So maybe you can tell this by the picture of my truck, or if you know me, you know how much I love my truck. I don’t make it a habit of putting crappy parts on my truck. I want it to work right. Not to mention, I would have preferred to get a little better than the less than 7 mpg I was getting with the carb  he “rebuilt.”

When my boyfriend finally got there, and we walked back in together, the guy definitely changed his tune. He did try to pull his “I don’t remember you, are you sure this was even paid for” type of BS, but not for long. BF told the guy he wanted his money back, and if the guy didn’t give it to him, he would take him to small claims court out of principal. Then the guy tried to start asking what was wrong with it, why didn’t we bring it back sooner, blah, blah, blah. Then went on to write him a check for the price of the carburetor.

The reality was, he sold us a bad carburetor, and when I tried to get the situation resolved, he completely ignored everything I had to say. I guess all I really needed was a nice big man for the guy to look up to.  Unfortunately, this is one shop that will totally try to take advantage a woman.  Avoid this place!!!

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Tags: auto repair, carb, carburetor, jerks, mechanics, trucks

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