- Report: #833
Complaint Review: The Pep Boys - Philadelphia Pennsylvania
-
Author Not Confirmed
Why?
The Pep Boys
3111 West Allegheny Avenue Philadelphia, 19132 Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Web:
N/A
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good?
Pep Boys Warranty... Seeking a reimbursment of $1,287.96 Rip-Off
I am contacting you to make you aware of a warranty problem Erik J. Bender has with Pep Boys at the corporate level and in
particular, store number 082 located at 6340 North Davis Highway in Pensacola Florida.
Erik graduated from the University of West Florida and spent the winter working in Pensacola. On March 7, 1999 Pep Boys
replaced rear seals on his car at a cost of $270.72. On March 19, 1999 Erik was near Montgomery, Alabama, on his way home,
when one of the rear seals failed resulting in rear axle damage amounting to $1,042.98.
Erik took the Capitol Cheverolet-Geo's repair bill of $1,042.98 to Pep Boys store number 082, where the failing seal was installed,
and asked them to honor their 90-day warranty by reimbursing him for the repair. The store manager took, in my opinion, unfair
advantage of a college student (Erik is currently enrolled in a Masters Program) desperate for warranty funds and late for a job
assignment in the north, by rudely and aggressively giving him a "take it or leave it" reimbursement offer of $455.80.
We have made numerous, unsuccessful attempts to contact Pep Boys' headquarters to give them the opportunity to correct the
situation. We thought they would honor their stated warranty, if the were made aware of the problem and perhaps provide
additional customer relation training to the store manager We were wrong on both counts.
We then contacted MAP (Motorist Assurance Program), of which Pep Boys is a member, requesting assistance. They said that
since Erik accepted Pep Boys' reimbursement offer there was no assistance they could provide.
While we may have hit a dead end as far as appropriate financial reimbursement is concerned, I will not allow this shoddy
treatment to go unpublicized. I will continue to contact appropriate organizations around the country asking them to alert the motor
vehicle owning public in their area of potential problems in settling warranty claims with Pep Boys.
Documentation for reimbursement is as follows:
Date $ Amount Expense
3/19/99 $46.19 Motel 6 in Montgomery, AL
3/20/99 97.50 Friend drove up from Pensacola and took me back while I waited for my car to be repaired 300
Mi.(round trip) x $0.325/Mi.
3/20/99 25.00 Food
3/21/99 25.00 Food
3/22/99 25.00 Food
3/23/99 25.00 Food
3/24/99 25.00 Food
3/25/99 25.00 Food
3/25/99 97.50 Friend took me back to Montgomery, AL from Pensacola 300 Mi. (round trip) x $0.325/Mi.
3/25/99 587.18 $1,042.98 Repair bill from Capitol Chevrolet - Geo minus the $455.80 cash refund given to me by
Pensacola Pep Boys.
3/25/99 39.59 Motel 6 in Montgomery, AL
3/26/99 270.00 One week of lost wages in upstate New York
$ 1,287.96 Total
We can send you copies of the Pep Boys and Capitol Chevrolet invoices if requested... Please help me get my money back.
Your assistance in resolving this warrantee claim is appreciated.
Erik J. Bender
956 East Lake Road,
Dundee, NY 14837
Telephone 315-536-4797 (evenings)
particular, store number 082 located at 6340 North Davis Highway in Pensacola Florida.
Erik graduated from the University of West Florida and spent the winter working in Pensacola. On March 7, 1999 Pep Boys
replaced rear seals on his car at a cost of $270.72. On March 19, 1999 Erik was near Montgomery, Alabama, on his way home,
when one of the rear seals failed resulting in rear axle damage amounting to $1,042.98.
Erik took the Capitol Cheverolet-Geo's repair bill of $1,042.98 to Pep Boys store number 082, where the failing seal was installed,
and asked them to honor their 90-day warranty by reimbursing him for the repair. The store manager took, in my opinion, unfair
advantage of a college student (Erik is currently enrolled in a Masters Program) desperate for warranty funds and late for a job
assignment in the north, by rudely and aggressively giving him a "take it or leave it" reimbursement offer of $455.80.
We have made numerous, unsuccessful attempts to contact Pep Boys' headquarters to give them the opportunity to correct the
situation. We thought they would honor their stated warranty, if the were made aware of the problem and perhaps provide
additional customer relation training to the store manager We were wrong on both counts.
We then contacted MAP (Motorist Assurance Program), of which Pep Boys is a member, requesting assistance. They said that
since Erik accepted Pep Boys' reimbursement offer there was no assistance they could provide.
While we may have hit a dead end as far as appropriate financial reimbursement is concerned, I will not allow this shoddy
treatment to go unpublicized. I will continue to contact appropriate organizations around the country asking them to alert the motor
vehicle owning public in their area of potential problems in settling warranty claims with Pep Boys.
Documentation for reimbursement is as follows:
Date $ Amount Expense
3/19/99 $46.19 Motel 6 in Montgomery, AL
3/20/99 97.50 Friend drove up from Pensacola and took me back while I waited for my car to be repaired 300
Mi.(round trip) x $0.325/Mi.
3/20/99 25.00 Food
3/21/99 25.00 Food
3/22/99 25.00 Food
3/23/99 25.00 Food
3/24/99 25.00 Food
3/25/99 25.00 Food
3/25/99 97.50 Friend took me back to Montgomery, AL from Pensacola 300 Mi. (round trip) x $0.325/Mi.
3/25/99 587.18 $1,042.98 Repair bill from Capitol Chevrolet - Geo minus the $455.80 cash refund given to me by
Pensacola Pep Boys.
3/25/99 39.59 Motel 6 in Montgomery, AL
3/26/99 270.00 One week of lost wages in upstate New York
$ 1,287.96 Total
We can send you copies of the Pep Boys and Capitol Chevrolet invoices if requested... Please help me get my money back.
Your assistance in resolving this warrantee claim is appreciated.
Erik J. Bender
956 East Lake Road,
Dundee, NY 14837
Telephone 315-536-4797 (evenings)
1 Updates & Rebuttals
atomgonuclear
Turnersville,New Jersey,
USA
Diffusion of Responsibility
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Sat, September 26, 2009
I worked for Pep Boys for about 1 year as a Mechanic and I have worked as Mechanic in several other shops and several Machine shops too. Although I have seen some shady things go on and I don't condone their activity, there is a lot of errors in your thinkin system in this complaint which I will attempt to break down, and why Pep Boys is not responsible for all your fees, and there is many loopholes in your story.
1) The First and most obvious error in your thinking process is that PepBoys is required to pay $125.00 for your food when your car was at the shop. Seeing as how you HAVE to eat anyway or perish from starvation. If you were home and had a working car you would still HAVE to eat food, just because you were hungry and spent large amounts of money on food doesn't mean THEY are responsible. If your dropping that kinda dough on fast food everyday I think your axle probably took a caputt because Erik would obviously have some weight issues therefore putting strain on the axle(I know that sounds stupid but so is his whole repot)
2) PepBoys is also not going to pay your "friend mr.x" over $100 or $200(not very clear since you made 2x roundtrips) because your "friend" had to drive you to AL. If you actually wanted proper documentation you would have taken a taxi or rented a car for 5 days(which you could have done for the same price). At least with a cab you could get a recipt. Your "friend" can not write up a bill for his time, seeing as how you could profit from this if he really only charged you 20 bucks for the ride so thats def. out the window due to the fact that he would be capitalizing from this.
3) PepBoys is DEFINATELY not going to pay for your lost wages, once again you could have rented a car and gone to work, basically this just proves that you are lazy and using this situation as an excuse not to goto work. If I was your boss I would have fired you, in which case according to your thinking, I could see you trying to sue for a whole year's wage because you lost your job.
4) Your math is wrong, you didn't even add your own numbers up correctly. This isnt a system of "guesstimation".
5) Yes I do beleive that they should have repaired the damage at no cost to you because they probably put the bearings in wrong, but your biggest mistake was taking the car to another service provider. When one garage makes a mistake you have to take it back to that garage. You took your car to another garage and just "assumed" that pepboys would pay for it. They are a bunch of shady mechanics and everybody knows that, but you can't "assume" anything. You have demonstrated that you know very little about "how the system works", how do you know Chevy-Geo wasnt also getting over on you. You dont. Also, seeing as how they dont have the same system of "rates", this would also get throw out in court because you could possibly capitalize from this. They aren't even in the same state. For example, PepBoys might have been able to fix the problem for half the price that Capitol-Chevy-Geo fixed it for. Therefore Capitol Chevy-Geo is capitalizing from the incident, therefore nullifying the terms of a warranty. Just about every single warranty on cars in the US has to be serviced by the issuring company of the warranty. Read the fine print it specifically states this. The fact that they even offered you $455 dollars was actually very noble of them. Which you decided to take anyway. Once you accept that payment that is it, you cannot come back a week later and say "Now I'm mad and I want more". In a court, once a prosecutor makes you a deal and you plead guilty thats it, your accepting his ruling. If you dont agree then you have to fight it in a trial and that takes time, its the way the American system works and you have to accept that. They are innocent of any wrongdoing until you prove otherwise.
In reality, things go wrong with cars and your just another mad person that is trying to diffuse responsibility onto somebody else because you made a lot of bad decisions. PepBoys probably would have fixed the problem for free, but you took justice into your own hands by going somewhere else. You have to realize that your car went bad. Eventually everybody's car breaks down at some point in life and it is very frustrating. There is not always an "easy way out" or somebody "to blame". When you buy a car you accept the possibility of something going wrong with it eventually, thats why people invest more money into better cars so this doesnt happen. I'm telling you right now that you WILL NOT get your money back and your lucky to have gotten $455 back. I dont want to sound like I'm personally attacking you, but this Rip-Off Report is obnoxious, anygry people like you give everybody a bad wrap, especially when you have not once in your whole report admitted any wrong doing of yourself.
P.S: You stayed in the hotel AFTER you picked up your car... 150 miles is only a 2 hour drive. You should be writing a ripoff report on your friend for charging u so much for gas.
After typing all this I realized that this post is like 10 years old, but I still want to respond just on PepBoys behalf because somebody will read this one day
