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Woman claims repair shop crashed her car
A woman brought her car to a repair shop in Santa Monica to get it fixed. Instead, she claims the repair shop totaled her vehicle.
LOS ANGELES - What was supposed to be a routine fluid check turned into a nightmare for a woman who says a local auto repair shop took her car on an unauthorized joyride and completely totaled it.
What they're saying:
Alicia Good took her Audi 5 to A&E German Car Service in Santa Monica, Thursday Sept. 3, after getting a fluid check light. She says she was told the fix was simple, and seeing good reviews for the shop online, she left it there for what she believed was a minor repair.
She began calling the shop Saturday morning wondering when she could pick up her car, and was told, repeatedly, they'd get back to her. It wasn't until Saturday around 2 p.m., she says the owner called her, saying there had been an accident.
In disbelief, when she saw her car "totaled" at the shop, Good says the owner told her an employee was driving it Friday night and crashed it into a k-rail barrier a few miles away on Palisades Drive.
Upset that she wasn't notified until nearly 18 hours after the crash, she followed up with both LAPD and Santa Monica police. She filed incident reports, confirmed the crash location, and obtained video of both the damaged car and the K-rail it allegedly hit.
The owner has given her a rental, but it's been a month without a so-called resolution to her car. Police told her that since she had entrusted the vehicle to the shop, this was not a criminal matter, even as she insisted that the shop owner told her the person driving the vehicle had "taken it home."
The other side:
The owner of the shop was not available, and no one at the shop would answer questions, saying the matter was being handled by their insurance company.
"It's egregious," Good said as she suggested people should start putting trackers in their vehicles when they leave them at any repair shop, no matter how reputable they may be.
"Take a photo of the mileage before so if they are driving your car around, you know how far they've gone," she added, pointing out that the shop had driven her car far beyond what a typical repair test drive would require.
The Source: Information for this story came from an interview with Alicia Good.