Dilemma - to pay or not to pay?

dougrainer wrote:

ChopperBill wrote:
Our G m dealer has a flat $120 diagnostic charge. That comes right of the top of the bill if you choose to fix it and they tell you what the cost will be. If not you pay up the $120. Honest and to the point. Jacking around with it for 4 hours and can't fix it is a crime.

Apples and Oranges. What that GM dealer is charging for is to connect to the Diagnostic computer. NOT to troubleshoot something that the Computer cannot tell them what is wrong. In this case the GM dealer would have charged the $120 and then called the customer to state, that they still do not know the problem and to get authorization to proceed on a hourly basis. Doug

Wrong, Apples to apples here the only thing I can remember being plugged into a computer was a bad transfer case sensor. Not everything involves a computor. Anything that was so obverse that it only took a few minutes to "diagnose" was no charge with an estimate

ChopperBill wrote:
Our G m dealer has a flat $120 diagnostic charge. That comes right of the top of the bill if you choose to fix it and they tell you what the cost will be. If not you pay up the $120. Honest and to the point. Jacking around with it for 4 hours and can't fix it is a crime.

Apples and Oranges. What that GM dealer is charging for is to connect to the Diagnostic computer. NOT to troubleshoot something that the Computer cannot tell them what is wrong. In this case the GM dealer would have charged the $120 and then called the customer to state, that they still do not know the problem and to get authorization to proceed on a hourly basis. Doug

"It depends entirely on exactly where officer found the glove"

This isn't a trial - it's completely about ethics.

Unless you are trying to state the OP is a liar or a troll.

The discussion is not a trial. There is no defense consul. My position is based on the way things ought to be. I have up close in person nose to nose had to deal with renumerated incompetents. Try arguing against the POINTS I made not against the shop who did the work. Trying separating ideas from reality. I spelled out grumpily the way things should be. Crystal clearly. Apparently you need to go back and do an IF word count. If has meaning it qualifies an issue.

I wanna hire Mex :B.

BTW, I took my VW Touareg in 3 weeks ago for a towing brake module that was non op. I was not getting electrical brakes to my Prodigy RF brake controller, and I was not getting 12V from my tow vehicle to the Trailer battery.

I ran a scan with VW Audi Group specific software to trouble shoot the problem. Software and cable said the brake control module had failed. Seems it failed Jan 16th, 2015 on my way to Quartzsite, when I first hooked up the trailer, it showed as "failed connection". Logged, timed, everything. Unit failed in 17 months, and not even 5000 miles of trailering.

Checked fuses, all 5 of them were good, checked main T-30 fuse (40 amps) and it too was good. Pinned out the voltage to the module and had 12V at input side of the module.

Took it in to VW, they ran the exact same diagnostics tests and pin out tests that I did, after bringing them in the print outs of my scan and proclaiming the towing brake module had failed. Took them 4 hours of trouble shooting.

They told me they ordered the part, it was covered under warranty. Part would be in in a week, had to be ordered from Germany.

Part was not in in a week, and when it did arrive, they told me the tech that worked on my car was on vacation and it would be another week.

Two weeks later, this Wednesday, I take the car in again. Tech is working on it and service writer asks me if I installed the trailer controller. I answered yes I did. He told me then that I would have to pay $400 for the new trailer controller. I told him I'll take my car now, thank you. He said VW wouldn't cover it unless they originally installed it. I told him the installation didn't fail, the part did.

I told him the module is plug and play, proprietary plugs, and it was not the installation that failed or needed warrantying, but the part why were you doing the labor and trouble shooting under warranty, but not the part?

Good luck VW dealership for getting paid for troubleshooting from corporate, I'll buy the part from a junkyard if you won't warranty the part, and take the 10 minutes to R&R the plug and play part.

This homie don't play that game. I didn't pay a cent. Shop isn't going to get paid for labor either. Part of that 3 year /36 month bumper to bumper warranty.

Service writer told me they had to order the new part, to compare and test against the old part to compare outputs. Service writer told me 2 weeks ago, it was all covered under warranty, part and labor.


Drag it out 2 plus weeks to make me feel thankful I am getting my trailer controller fixed so I can camp this summer. This is how they break you down, and squeeze the money out of you, the wrong way. Not me.

This VW dealership is located in LA county in the high desert. ;-)




proprietary connector plug ins.



Popped the cover off, nothing on the circuit board appears fried or burnt. Maybe a bad solder connection or a bad chip...

NinerBikes wrote:
Reviewing the bridge plans is a engineering salary job for an employee, probably contracted by an Engineering firm or outfit. Otherwise it would be a fixed price contract job done by a professional sole proprietor whose specialty is engineeering. You'd get paid, regardless and probably would set up a billing schedule with some percentage of pay before starting, and the balance at completion.

No delivery company would take those terms, not even UPS or Fed Ex. There may be penalty clauses for late delivery, but the contract would be written correctly so that the carrier gets paid, with a minor penalty in pay for late delivery.

That's how the real world works, it's all in how the contract is written. The fool that doesn't understand a bit of contract law is the person that gets taken advantage of.

Exactly. Only those that have read the agreement or were present at the time the job was discussed should pass judgment.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
It is about an agreement that was broken because of incompetence. The mere ASKING for money is a moral sin if the agreement was broken whatever the agreement was. The demand of the shop to be paid for incompetence is another sin.

I assume you must have either read the agreement or been present when discussed.

bob_nestor wrote:

NinerBikes wrote:
My take on it is this: Work gets done when something gets accomplished. You took it to the shop, nothing got accomplished, therefore, no work got done. If I take a project on and I can't fix it, I need to stop, cut my losses short and move on. I can't bill for what I didn't do or resolve, the whole purpose of bringing it in to the shop. They were in over their head, nothing owed.

Never confuse effort with results, you pay for results.

Wow! Wish we could apply this to politicians, or road crews. Ever see five guys standing around watching one guy work a shovel? I'll bet we're paying for six, not one.

What would you want to bet that those 6 employees are on a union paid job a prevailing wage, or it's a government paid job?

smkettner wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Four years ago a Mexican lady asked me to fix her generator. After two hours I narrowed it down to a specific transistor that had shorted on the board. I would not think of charging her one centavo. No transistors of that genre were available.

The next lady may ask you to load some bricks and drive them to the next town in four hours.
So you load up her truck but find the bridge is out so you must return. She says you are not competent because you did not check the roads before you did the work. So she says unload and no pay. Good luck.

So next week the bridge repair foreman asks you to review the plans for the repair. You spend a day calculating and reviewing but it needs no real changes. Foreman says you really did not do anything so he will not pay. You are fine just knowing the repair will be made.

Reviewing the bridge plans is a engineering salary job for an employee, probably contracted by an Engineering firm or outfit. Otherwise it would be a fixed price contract job done by a professional sole proprietor whose specialty is engineeering. You'd get paid, regardless and probably would set up a billing schedule with some percentage of pay before starting, and the balance at completion.

No delivery company would take those terms, not even UPS or Fed Ex. There may be penalty clauses for late delivery, but the contract would be written correctly so that the carrier gets paid, with a minor penalty in pay for late delivery.

That's how the real world works, it's all in how the contract is written. The fool that doesn't understand a bit of contract law is the person that gets taken advantage of.

But I WOULD have checked the roads. I LIVE 24/7/365 with promises down here and when I make a promise I have four alternative ways to get it done. The ROAD to town DID CLOSE and my rent was due. No excuses. Drove to the washout, parked, waded across, caught a ride into town went to bank extracted money, reversed course and my rent was paid on the 5th.

I come to PRE (that means before) AGREEMENTS with folks. If I do not do a job correctly I do not ask for money. If a flying saucer comes down, leaves me be, but gravitates the bricks up, I not only do not ask for money - I owe for the bricks. Why oh why are these concepts so hard for some people to understand?

If I owe someone money and have $11.64 to live on for the rest of the month like I told my daughter

Tortillas, salt and music.

This is not about bricks. It is about an agreement that was broken because of incompetence. The mere ASKING for money is a moral sin if the agreement was broken whatever the agreement was. The demand of the shop to be paid for incompetence is another sin.

If a person tried this crappola in the 1880's they would have found themselves playing plumb bob on the end of a rope.

Times have changed haven't they? And I want no part of them. Alicia and Eduardo owners of two stores here stated during the last six-months "You have no limit to your credit here".

I joke about a lot of things but honesty isn't one of them. Remember, I am a retired business owner that dealt in both products and service. At one time I had both Cruise America and Good Sam towing otherwise electrical failure total loss rigs to me for resurrection. Four, five hundred mile tows. From LA, and from Sacramento. I let Armando and Rosalio do the physical work while I supervised, step-by-step. Armando worked as high quality with his hands and did I. The ship's carpenter that did my bus, was hired away from the bus to remove and replace cabinetry and paneling. This augmented battery testing (which in fact occurred about <30% of business time, and alternator rebuilding, an intense 4-5> hours per day. My days were 16-17 hours.