Just finished dealing with something that was a pain in the ass.  Earlier this year, I damaged a BMW that wasn’t mine. I entered the garage too far to the right, and I scraped the side of the car on the corner of the garage.  The person who’s car it was freaked out (very understandibly), so I put it in reverse, and the passenger mirror clipped the same corner of the garage, and snapped off.  At this point, I let the person drive their own car in the garage, and my response to the violent screams was “I’ll take care of it!” That was all I could say.  I can’t tell them to chill out, when I’ve just incurred damage to their prized posession.  In my mind though, it was “Just stuff” — I mean.. a scraped side, and a broken mirror (the mirror itself was not broken, for you supersticious types… just the housing) are way better than being in a car accident, or beiing injured, or injuring other people.  It’s cosmetic, and can be reparied.  So, I called up a friend who’s told me that his neighbor has fixed his BMW numerous times, and at a great cost. It went downhill from there!

The guy got dropped off at the house, and drove the BMW to his shop. We had a strange feeling, and the owner of the car wrote down the license plate & VIN number… just in case a police report would have to be made. Women, for the record, have a much better intuition about these things than guys do.

The guy quoted me $450, and told me that BMW would charge $1,800.  Clearly, I was feeling pleased with myself.  I forgot to mention that I was to be leaving town in 3 or 4 days, so wanted everything fixed before that.  That night we wanted to check on the car, so I called Eric, and told him that I left some stuff in the trunk that we needed to get.  He gave us the address to the shop, and after passing that area 3 or so times, we called him up again… he gave us different directions.  We went to where he told us, and could not find anything.  We found one autobody shop, but it was not the right one.  We called again, and now he told us we went too far, and he’ll meet us at Jack-In-The-Box.  We went there, and rather than him meeting us, and having us follow him to the car, he brought the car!  That was weird…. now the irror was not dangling off, it was just missing. The trimming that got messed up was gone.

I’ll tell you what… I’m going to give you the condensed version, because I can talk about this all day.  The paint job was fine…. it was well blended.  The mirror was not new as he had told us, but rather the same mirror (or one in worse condition) glued on, screwed on, and missing the bottom panel– so humidity can get in, etc… The guy just kept yanking our chain.  He kept saying that he’s got parts on order.  He kept saying he’s coming over.  Within 2 months, his fix of the mirror was fading… the mirror was starting to fall off, and it looked like crap. The girl was afraid to wash her car. I had to call, because Eric was not returning the girl’s calls!  He wasn’t retuning many of mine, but I have access to numerous phone numbers, and was able to catch him off guard.

He came over, took the part (I was back in Austin by this time), and sure enough did NOT have the mirror back on Thursday as promised. In fact, Monday the girl called him up and said (the truth) that she got pulled over, and ticketed for driving without a mirror.  Get this!  He brought the mirror back, and reattached it.  This time, it was not only just as hideous, and as badly installed, but it was in worse shape than when he brought it!  Now the memory was broken on it!  He had promised us both that he had ordered another part, but clearly he didn’t.  He lied to my face, he lied to her face, he lied to my friend’s face, and he’s lied to another friend’s face (Telling him that the reason his car was brought back late is because he washed and waxed it– the car now had a few hundred extra miles on it, and was filthy).  Bottom line- this guy is a pathological liar, and it cost another $500 to fix the mirror at a certified shop, which said that the mirror would’ve cost   $270 to fix, but that this guy had messed up any chance of that with the way he glued things so half-assedly).

Regarding the friend that was lied to about having the car waxed… this was after he drove around 2 hours as a passenger in a tow truck that was carrying his wife’s newly damaged BMW.  So… no one knows if he has a shop.  He has access to some place that can do paint… but my friend’s BMW had many hundreds of miles that were not there previously.

The whole ordeal has really stressed & frustrated the girl who’s BMW I damaged.  I was not happy to hear that it was going to be an additional $500, but I suppose that is a great bargain compared to having to deal with this lying piece of crap.

Lesson learned– if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  The “Friend of a friend” system might work… but you should always get a 2nd opinion or quote from a professional shop, just to find out what the real damage is.  I doubt the damage was $1,800 as I believed the prick that it originally was.

I don’t have a business name – I just have his home address, and his cell phone.  Any ideas of what I can do?  I doubt the BBB will take a report on “Eric, the Mexican, with poor English, who has a garage that we don’t know where it is, but lives at such and such” – I’m more than happy to post his phone number on here if y’all want to terrorize him daily.

I have an eternal apology to the girl for all the stress. My friend who gave me Eric’s number tried a few times to leverage things with Eric, but has a family, and didn’t want to put them at risk… I don’t blame him. He tried a time or two, but any further and our relationship would be strained as well.