Jackie for the win!

     I reported Parras Auto Repair to the Bureau of Automotive Repair in California. Price gouged to shit, harassed to hell, and I absolutely was not about to pay that crook $2600 for the way he called me a bitch, made me cry and drive six hours to have my personal mechanics check it out. 

    I got a call today and the investigator reported the results of my complaint. Chris, the owner, said he would accept my offer of $1500, as long as I took down that Yelp review. 

    What Yelp review? I don't even have a Yelp account. I make fun of people who write Yelp reviews. My sister writes Yelp reviews, and they're all so funny. I quote them to her.

    The investigator went into details, and it literally all sounded like my sister, who had told me she wanted to write a Yelp review so bad, but hadn't had time. I told him that while some people wanted me to write a review, I hadn't done so yet, and neither had anyone I'd known.

    If anyone reading this wrote a review, can you tell me? You sounded eerily similar to what my sister would have said, and I'm curious to know what would come up if you did a 23andMe.

    So I went digging.

    I checked Yelp, I checked Google Reviews, I checked every possible reviewing site-- there was no review that had a story with all the details the investigator said Chris stated. A lot of the one star reviews had similar issues to mine, but they were not mine.

    I'm sure it won't surprise anyone to read that Chris lied about everything. He said the key situation was irrelevant because he offered to get a locksmith in, forgetting that his entire job is cars and their fucking keys. He said he never called me a bitch or went on a cussing tirade in Spanish. He said his employees never drank or smoked on the job. He said the timeline was accurate because he wasn't responsible for the machine shop taking too long. He said when he first told me the price, even my uncle had said it was a good deal, which was flatly inaccurate. My uncle had asked me if my car was worth it. 

    (PS: If you look on Google Reviews, there's one about a truck that was in his shop for 27 days, and Chris kept "finding" this and that wrong with it, and they took the truck back, but nothing had been fixed. Sounds familiar, except I put my foot down a lot sooner.)

    The investigator said most of my complaint was hearsay, and couldn't be proven, but he cracked down on the violations he found. Chris said the only reason I wasn't provided with an invoice was because I was a "student" and he was "working with me on a payment plan". The investigator said that, regardless, he had to provide an invoice at the end of service. That the fact I had to specifically ask the mechanic for a list of what they did to my car wasn't allowed. 

    Suddenly, also, Chris knew exactly what happened to my car without all this insane antonymical verbage that he kept using, and told the investigator very clearly. He had checked my compression, he said.

    Bitch, no the fuck you did not.

    I decided not to mention the interference vs non-interference engine thing.

    Anyway, when I told the investigator that I had looked everywhere and couldn't find the review and that everyone I knew swore they hadn't written one, he told me to disregard it and just pay him the remaining $610. 

    Hm. I guess that's adequate.

    The fact that he lied reminds me of my mom, and that was not a good feeling, but I wasn't surprised. I knew that was going to happen, my uncle knew that was going to happen, and my sister knew that was going to happen.

    Despite their 4 1/2 stars on all review websites, all the one star reviews are complaints that are exactly similar to how my story went. You'd think the overall review would be the overall experience, right?

    Please, please, please. Wait til Monday, if you break down in Oxnard on a Sunday.

    PS: I decided to bring my mechanics brownies, Gatorades, and a card that says exactly what I wrote in my last post. I'll let you know how that goes.