Yes, I’m totally f’ing stressed. Yes, my stomach is in knots and I feel nauseous.
What kind of atrocious situation could put me in such a state? It’s my past. My past is coming back, not to haunt me, but to tell me how I bent over and took it……
My Prius was in an accident before I bought it. And not just any accident, the kind of accident that requires both skins on the two front doors to be replaced, the bumper replaced, as well as the front drivers side panel. My car was still $25,000.
So one might ask themselves, who would pay 25 thousand dollars on a vehicle that was in such a serious accident that TWO opposite sides, as well as the front end of the vehicle had to be worked on (we can assume that it was ran into so hard it got pushed into something else). Well as we can see, that person would be me. Shame on me, right?
Wrong. I was never told. When we (my mom came with me, of course – needed that extra set of eyes) went to look at the vehicle, there were two there. Both gold, same year, the one I ended up buying, we’ll call it my car at this point, had 10 thousand miles on it, and the other 20 thousand. The 20 thousand mile vehicle was around 3-4 thousand dollars less than my $25,000 car. I was 2 months pregnant at this point, and the salesman encouraged me to buy the more expensive of the two, as the more expensive one had a few more options, one option being twice the number of airbags. Me being a newish Mom (as I was still pregnant), my mom and I had to agree that it would be a better idea to pay extra and get the car that was safer, for the baby of course.
After test driving the car, which I immediately fell in love with, my mother got out and noticed a dent in the rear driver’s side door. We asked what it was, where it came from, and insisted it be repaired before I purchased it. So, my salesman assured me that it must have been something like the car was bumped into in a parking lot, and no big deal at all, they could just pop it right back out and it would be as good as new. My mother and I figured then no big deal, something that simple happens to probably almost every car (I have a couple of other scratches from being grazed with other cars – no dents though), and if they were going to fix it that simply, couldn’t be any big deal. So I purchased the car, and made sure I wrote down on the paperwork “fixing damage” under the line that says that I personally examined the vehicle and found it free of damage.
When I went to pick up the car after the door was fixed, the nice body shop man told me that it really couldn’t be popped back out, but that he repainted it and buffed it, so the dent wasn’t really notibable at all anymore. You could see it if you ran your hand down it and got really close to the car – but at this point I had purchased the vehicle, and I thought whatever, I can live with it, it’s nothing.
Well…albeit four years later, my door starts to rust. Yes, rust. I bring it to a Toyota dealer like a good car owner, as I still have quite awhile to pay on this expensive car so I need to make sure it lasts. They tell me that the repair work (wait, what?!) was done incorrectly, not sealed right, and it was causing the door to internally rust. So they could patch it up, paint it or what not, but the rust would come right back. The only way to actually fix it was to replace the whole door skins again, and start over. Thousands of dollars worth of repair.
So I say, wait, this car wasn’t repaired, I had them try to fix a little dent on the rear door, and they tried but ended up just blending it and it didn’t look bad so I didn’t care. The nice body shop worker, said oh, okay, but the front door was too, I’ll show you. So he brings me out to another Prius, around the same year, and opens and shuts the door numerous times so I can hear how nicely it shuts and it just kind of makes a small noise when you shut it. He then walks me over to my car, opens the door, and shuts it, and it slams. The door sounds hollow, and it shuts very loudly. He then informs me that it does that because they stripped the door, and didn’t put the “sound barrier” back in, so it makes that loud hollow sound when you shut it. Wow. Okay.
So I call Brandon quite upset about not being told that my car was in some kind of accident, and now the door was rusting because whomever fixed it didn’t do it right. So he called a Toyota dealer, gave them a story about how he was trying to buy this car off of someone, and wanting to see if they had any service records on it. Lo and behold, there was body shop work done on it, the replaces of both front doors and the front panel, and it was worked on by none other but the people I bought it from. Ah yes, set in anger.
So, back to the beginning, where my past has come back to show me I took it….I am quite, upset to say the least. It is against Florida law to say that the car was not seriously damaged in any way when the customer asks about it (actually I think it might even be a little more generous than that…they pretty much have to tell you). My mother and I obviously asked about the dent, and was reassured it was nothing. I guess nothing to them isn’t a serious accident at 900 miles. Also the vehicle was a certified used, so I figured no problems, as certified used means “basically like new” on Toyota’s brochures. How could that car be a certified used?
So, at this point, the dealership told me they would call me back once they find the actual hard copy of the paperwork from my transaction. Translation: Going to try and figure out how to tell you that you took it, and are going to continue to take it, because we are going to tell you we are not liable and won’t pay to fix it.
So, as life has taken me down this path in my life where even the good is seriously tainted, I’m sure I’ll end up in court at some point. I normally, well no pretty much always let things go. I just deal with things, and say why fight over it. This time, I’m not going to forget. I can’t forget. For the upcoming years that I will still be paying on my car, I need to have it fixed so that where they originally fixed it won’t completely rust out. And what that Toyota dealership did to me (yes, an actual Toyota dealer), was illegal. Let alone that dealership certified that car as a Toyota certified used vehicle, which means they ran a carfax on it and it returned with no problems (obviously wrong), and so I was under the piece of mind that everything was fine.
Why does my life suck?
