Rear-Ended By Auto Repair Fraud

[dArKeR]

"They didn't fix it the way they were supposed to," says Asay. "They had not repaired the frame of the car correctly. It made the car unsafe."

His car was examined by California's Bureau of Auto Repair, which found the work was "grossly negligent." The California Attorney General has accused Caliber of ripping off customers at locations across the state.

Worse still, is what critics like Ron Pyle say is a colossal conflict of interest, that the repair shop chain is owned by a group of insurance companies.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/11/eveningnews/main599731.shtml

[Odallas]

1. Sounds like my doctor

I think he is more concerned with the insurance companies bottom line than my health. You think he might be owned by an insurance company?

[slackmaster]

2. Auto repair is a well-established government-supported racket here

The cited article addresses fraud in frame and body repair, but the biggest racket in auto repair in California is practically sponsored by the government: Smog inspections and repairs.

I'm a strong supporter of clean air laws, but here's how California has gotten off track:

Normally you have to get your car inspected for emissions every two years by a state licensed and certified inspector. Inspectors were authorized to do minor repairs or adjustments to get your vehicle in compliance, and most of the time that was all that most vehicles needed unless they were old and worn out.

Things were going well until a few years ago when a new law created "test-only" stations, which are not allowed to do any repairs or adjustments. You either pass or fail, and if you fail you have to take your vehicle somehwere else to get adjusted, or fix it yourself and come back for a followup inspection. The purpose was supposedly to reduce the chance of fraudulent inspections, for reasons that have never been clear to me but at least the intention was good.

Every vehicle has a 1 in 4 chance of being randomly sent to a test-only station for the bienniel smog check, even if it's brand-new.

The state also tightened the emissions rules (which is OK by me), and lowered the bar for a vehicle to be declared a "gross polluter" which you are required to either fix or scrap. That's OK in principle too, but once your vehicle is declared a GP your options are limited: You must have it repaired by a shop specially licensed to deal with GPs. You can't simply drop in a new engine yourself and slap a new catalytic converter on the car and get it re-tested. You have to pay big bucks to a licensed repair shop even if you or your neighborhood mechanic is fully capable of doing the repairs.

This happened to me. What could have been a $200 engine cleaning and carburetor rebuild mushroomed into an $800 fiasco, and to top it all off the crooks who repaired my truck drilled a 1/4" hole in the exhaust pipe to make it pass inspection. My only alternative would have been to junk the vehicle (which costs money) or sell it out of state. I sucked up and paid the $800, drove it for another year, and sold it.

The "test-only" stations and special licensing to repair gross polluters constitute a state-supported racket.

[dArKeR]

3. This doesn't sound possible or legal in America! Can you provide some

factual links? thanks


"once your vehicle is declared a GP your options are limited: You must have it repaired by a shop specially licensed to deal with GPs"

[slackmaster]

5. California law is so convoluted and complex it's hard to pinpoint

http://69.10.163.89/stations.htm is somebody's decent overview of the types of smog check stations in California.

I think the racket works like this: For a repair shop to be authorized to certify gross polluter vehicles as repaired they need a special "GPC" certification from the state. There are only a few hundred places with that certification. Your failure on the smog test is a scarlet letter. The GPC stations are the only ones authorized to perform the test, and they won't do the test unless you let them make repairs. Licensed repair shops that do not have the GPC certificate can't work on a known gross polluter. That's buried in the code somewhere.

I suppose you could drop in your own new engine or have your brother-in-law do it and not mention the fact that you've worked on the vehicle when you take it to the GPC station. There's nothing specific in the law that prevents that, but you don't have the option of having a "real" mechanic like the nice guy at the Chevron station on the corner do the repairs. I guarantee the GPC station will find something to charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars for, they always do. They're a bunch of crooks because they have a steady stream of captive clientele courtesy of the "test-only" stations.

[dArKeR]

4. A friend is a home insurance Adjuster. A home has fire damage and the

insurance company NEVER wants to pay out the fair amount to rebuild. So the Adjuster is hired by the home owner to fight with the Whore Insurance company to prove to them that their payout should be higher. And the Adjuster gets it up from $1000s to $10,000s. I am very serious. I've seen the legal paperwork.

For the little percent the owner pays the Adjuster, it seems very well worth it!

I'm not advertising, I'm just expressing my opinion from what I continually hear from actual cases going on right now. The entire group of home owners insurance providers are Whores. You might have better odds at saving the payments and go to Vegas every couple years and try to win.