[philio]

My sister just had over 3K repairs done on her van and now she finds out that her brakes have gone bad. Her van is extremely heavy, and all I can figure is that she doesn't do her regular maintenance.

[coup]

I would think twice before I did anymore work on it. Still, it is just the brakes, which you have to expect might go bad. Sometimes, with cars, when it rains it pours.

[HANG]

You might want to go to a new service center. Perhaps if you know of a good one, you can route your sister over there. I really think that whatever happened here is reflective of a bad service shop.

[philio]

It could be. I have never used the shop she took her van too but I wouldn't keep taking it back if I were her. I gave her the number to the guy I use, I just hope she will give him a call.

[vroombaby]

How old is the van and why were the brakes not thoroughly checked when the rest of the work was completed? I would be yelling at the place who last worked on it if it were me.

[silverfox]

I agree with vroombaby. She should go back to who originally preformed the work and question them. Maybe they will give her a discount. So many times I have been caught up financially, only to have something go wrong with my car. It's such a pain.

[philio]

I just talked to her about this. Apparently there are only certain places that are willing to work on handicap vans with a lift. The lift itself is worth over $15 K and is costly to repair. I guess the engineering of the lift and the weight of the van make them really hard to work on, and a lot more expensive. Her luck is still not good, her van runs great now but during the heat wave one of the windows broke (the one under the lift which I guess takes extra stress due to the lift) and then her wheel chair died. She can't push herself in a manual wheel chair because of the nature of her neurological disorder. She just got a new chair yesterday but I know she is broke as a joke. Her new job does pay more than her old one, but every bit of that money is gone and we all had to pitch in to help. I had no idea lifts caused so many complications with vehicles. I am doing some research and I guess some of the newer model lift vans use better technology, to0 bad they cost more than she has to spend right now.

[HANG]

Originally Posted by vroombaby

How old is the van and why were the brakes not thoroughly checked when the rest of the work was completed? I would be yelling at the place who last worked on it if it were me.

I'm with you vroom. I would not have taken kindly to this shop not doing the job properly. If the brakes suddenly broke (sounds strange) then the shop should've looked at that. What if they just broke them so they could make more money with you having to go back. That is what a lot of these shops do nowadays.

[Donald]

A lot of shops intentionally break parts of your car? I'm sorry HANG, I have a hard time believing it's that blatant, at least for a large percentage of shops. Even if you don't have any morals, that sounds like an incredibly risky thing to do, considering what would happen if you somehow got caught. I'm more apt to believe it was simply poor and negligent work. I guess that's really not much better, and I wish philio's sister the best of luck with her problems.

[vroombaby]

I am thankful today that we just managed to swap over to capital one at a better interest rate for our one auto. After already dealing with things like this and coming out on the end once already like your sis at least we can try to get back some of the money we have already spent.