Mechanic doing errands in my truck.

Took my 2005 Tundra in a few miles prior to the warranty expiring to get the compass fixed, that never worked from day one.

They had trouble fixing it, took 3 days.

Anyway, I picked it up today and when I got home, I noticed there was a purple Game-boy sitting on the Front seat.

Hmmm..

With a child's game in it "Taz-mania".

Hmmm...

And the truck had 13 extra miles on it.

Hmmm...

So, it looks like someone uses the customer's trucks to run their errands including picking up their kids.

The service manager called me back and denied it of course. He said they found the game-boy in the truck's door pocket.

Huhh???

I don't have little kids, there has never been a little kid in the truck and I'm the only one that ever drives my truck.

 

Seems odd to put 13 extra miles to repair a compass. Gameboy might have been in there for a long time, though?

 

I used to work for a guy who routinely took customers exotic cars home and gave rides to the neighbor kids. It always seemed a little inappropriate but he justified it as "test driving". On Fridays if we had more cars than would fit in the shop for the weekend, he would distribute keys to some of us to take a car home. The reasoning was that it was safer sitting in my driveway than in an unattended parking area behind the shop. Now that it's my reputation on the hook, I only drive my customers cars when necessary or with their permission.

It's unfortunate that he couldn't own up to what obviously happened. To me this is a bigger deal than the 13 miles.

 

A good tactic is to pull out a note pad before you leave and let the service guy/mechanic see you recording the mileage when you drop it off.(it wouldn't hurt to walk around the car too to make note of any dents etc.) That way it lets them no that there'll be no joy rides in my car and the car's condition is duly noted.

 

It will be now!

So... what's your highest score thus far, Mr. Gunboat?

 

eBay?

 

Sounds like you got free Gameboy. 13 miles for a Gameboy? Sounds like a fair trade.

Eric

 

Dealership should have cameras if you want to find out. Free Gameboy is nice, you should sell it.

 

Consider yourself lucky they don't service the Dino
There's a dad out there in the shop springing for a new gameboy for his kid right now.

DM

 

I think UroTrash is too busy playing his new gameboy to put it on ebay or come on here and post.

 

Damn game-boy has a password. Don't know if its for the game cartridge or the console.

eBay has similar consoles for <$20, its not worth crap.

 

I'm not sure how possible this is, but can you threaten to file charges against him and commission fingerprint tests? Tell him he has 24 hours to produce the guilty party, or else they all get printed and, when a winner is chosen, you'll see him in court. This actually worked when a buddy of mine got ripped off when his movers stole jewelry out of their bedroom. He was ready to subpoena lie detector tests at his own expense.

 

I got ya beat. When Wayne Hynes had my 308, he disconnected another customers Ferrari spedo - odo cable and drove it all over the place!

 

Let's see a Ferrari is a ...car?

and a Tundra is a ....truck.

If there's one thing I learned when I lived in Texas...You DO NOT mess with a man's TRUCK.

 

LOL.

Did he explain why they were looking in your door pocket while fixing a compass? I assume the compass is not located in the door pocket.

Did he offer any explanation for the additional 13 miles?

 

Said there was a rattle in the door that bothered the mechanic so he looked in the door pockets.

He said it takes a lot of driving to calibrate the compass and they had trouble doing this.

In reality you calibrate it by riding around slowly in a parking lot in circles. 13 miles: damn lot of circles.

 

Well, Toyota is part of NASCAR now, ya know..

 

Dont the stealerships record the mileage and body condition along with the job order during drop off anyways?

A bit over the top (no offence)! Jewelry is one thing but a gameboy!? Im sure you'll have a hard time convincing the CSI's or the investigators to fingerprint everyone from the garage since Uro got the better end of the deal anyways (he did get a free Gameboy).

 

My brother was on his way to my place once when his car died, so he pulled into a little corner garage to have it fixed. So on Monday I am going to work, and as I am in the area of this garage, I see a 50-ish lady driving his car with a kid in the back. Err, wtf? So I call the shop and say I am the guy with the red LHS and how's it going - is it ready to be picked up? He tells me he got it apart OK but he has it in pieces and it will be ready that afternoon. So I said "I'm about to pass your shop on the way to work, I'll swing by and have a look". He starts stammering, making up rapid-fire excuses "I'm REALLY busy" or "it's locked in the back of the shop" etc.

I told him I saw some woman driving the frickin car and before he BSes anymore, that there was a kid in the back so it wasn't a road test. He just cavalierly said "ohhh the RED car, yeah I have someone out doing a few errands but they are checking for proper operation too while they are out - killing 2 birds with one stone". Riiiight.

Bastard didn't even give us a break on the tab.

 

No but he might be able to get a local TV station to do it. Do any of the local news groups in the area do hidden camera sting operations? If so give them a call and see if they'd like to help. 13 miles is at least a couple bucks in gas.

 

Reminds me of an expose' that a local TV news program did on appliance repair companies. They put hidden cameras in the kitchen and called several companies for a repair on the microwave that really worked fine (this is back when they still cost $500).

Plenty of parts being changed that weren't needed but the real jewel was the guy that pissed in the customer's kitchen sink, right on camera.

 

Back in the 70's my sisters best friend borrowed our pick up. He drove it to Juarez from El Paso where we lived. Had an accident with the truck. The guy was initially very up front about the whole thing. said he would pay for the repair and that he didn't want to get insurance involved. Mexico has very good body shops and the truck was in Mexico so we decided to let him fix the truck there. When the repair too several weeks my dad called the body shop to investigate. The shop told us they could never get the truck in the shop because the guy we lent it too was always driving the truck and it was always covered with mud and sand. We complained to the kids dad and the truck finally got fixed.
The kid became a big time drug dealer, traveled around in a three SUV motorcade, lots of body guards. The whole deal.
A rival dealer eventually paid off his body guards. The hit was very professional. The SUV in front stopped, the SUV behind penned him in. A third car pulled up beside him and opened fire with automatic weapons. True story.
We always suspected that he was using our 4x4 truck to run drugs from Mexico across the desert but we never found anything in the truck when we got it back.

 

I once heard that you could ruin the circuitry on an in-car compass by running an electric paint buffer over the hood. IIRC, this was on a Pontiac that was owned by a friend of mine. Just out of curiosity, Doc, does your owner's manual say anything about that?

 

When I was in high school my econ professor/baseball coach needed a ride back to his apartment and since I had the coolest car ('87 Camaro IROC Z-28) I got out of class to give him a ride; it was Friday afternoon and I was a senior so BFD. His Ford Bronco II was at a shop having some work done and they told him it would not be finished until after the weekend. On the way back to school, we are driving by a McD's on a major street, and he sees his car pulling out of the drive thru driven by some dude in dark blue mechanic's suit. When we get to school, he calls the shop to find the status and the guy on the other end told him that the car was still up on the lift and that they were waiting for parts, and my professor made him aware of the fact that he had seen his own car on a fast food run. I don't know what happened after that but he wasn't real happy with the shop for lying to him.

 

When I was driving the miata I dropped it off at a local shop and later saw it parked at a restaurant at lunch with the top down.

One of my friends got stopped by the cops in a parking lot driving in circles to fix his compass. They thought he was drunk going really slow in circles.