Carsumer Advocacy: eBay winner M3 update and Circuit City allegedly destroys a Civic
Click above for more pics of the damage allegedly caused Circuit City
For those interested in the soap opera that's ensued surrounding Ken Tanisaka and his efforts to take delivery of a BMW M3 sedan won fair and square and eBay Motors for $60k from BMW of Lincoln, Nebraska, here's what appears to be the final update. Ken's latest post says that all the details for payment are settled and the car is going to be delivered to his nearest Bimmer dealer, South Bay BMW, any day now. Props are paid to his lawyer, Scott, who really did the heavy lifting, as well as the hundreds of thousands of internet folk who made a stink on Ken's behalf. Ken is also auctioning off the right to pick his vanity license plates for the car, which should be interesting. Half the money will go to pay his legal bills, and the other half to charity.
But all is still not well in the land of Carsumer Advocacy (you like? we're starting a new category just for this stuff). VTECnical, a member of the 8thcivic.com forum, shocked us with a tale of $12,199.64 in damages done to his hardly driven 2007 Honda Civic Si with just 800 miles on the odo. The alleged perpetrator in this case is Circuit City store #3124 in Vernon Hills, IL, which reportedly did the damage while installing $3,190.62 worth of stereo equipment into VTECnical's car. While CC did refund the purchase price of the components, it has also cut off all communication, leaving this car owner with an estimate for over $12k in repairs. How could a stereo installation go so wrong? We're not sure and would like more pics of the damage from VTECnical to inspect for ourselves, but the images we do have of the "crime scene" and the estimates given for repair are irrefutable enough, at least for the internet. Circuit City, meanwhile, remains silent.
Gallery: VTECnical's Circuit City Catastrophe
[Source: m3post.com, 8thcivic.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Andy 3:02PM (3/28/2008)
That's why you avoid Circuit City for anything complicated.
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Chance 10:35PM (3/28/2008)
I don't understand why the store is in Vernon Hills, IL, and the papers are from Glen Head, NY. Are we missing something to this?
Purifoy 3:12PM (3/28/2008)
You're right, Andy. The owner probably would have been much better off just going to the dealership and having the work done.
And with $12,000 being bantered around for the cost of repairs, I can hear those legal beagles barking now!
Jon 3:14PM (3/28/2008)
Ditto. I took my '99 Lumina in for a simple aftermarket stereo installation, and they did not hook up the back light, which is a problem while driving at night. I took it back, had them 'fix' it, only to not fix it and now it refused to accept a CD. I threw up my hands, grabbed the manual, a flash light, and a screwdriver. And fixed the problem myself... in 15 minutes.
geo.stewart 6:11PM (3/28/2008)
why does he have a NY quote for repairs when he is using a circuit city in IL? I'm guessing the car is not drivable so something seems fishy.
regardless, CC really got in over their head on this. No, I wouldnt use them but at the same time they should not sell something they cant deliver on.
SAA 10:38PM (3/29/2008)
What is with that RO from the Honda dealer? Looks like a 3rd grader wrote it up? They dont have a computer in the service dept of that Honda store?
TwinTurbo3000GT 3:23PM (4/15/2008)
how exactly was there $12000 worth of damage? from the pics i saw, it just looked like some jacked up wiring and maybe a few interior pieces.
Richard S. 3:09PM (3/28/2008)
This is crazy? How can it cost about half the price of a new car to fix it? Wouldn't it be cheaper to drive the car to the nearest Honda Civic assembly plant in the U.S., and have the workers reinstall a whole new dash and parts affected?
Or perhaps drive the car to a Honda dealer in Mexico. At least the labor won't be at $100/hour.....
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brn 6:18PM (3/28/2008)
"How can it cost about half the price of a new car to fix it?"
My reaction to this (understandable) statement is how in the world can a Honda Civic cost over $24,000?
Joe 10:25PM (3/28/2008)
"how in the world can a Honda Civic cost over $24,000?"
I just built a Civic Si Coupe on the Honda Website to see how much I could make it cost.
MSRP including selected accessories: $29,497
Jake B 3:11PM (3/28/2008)
When I was working at the caddy dealership in town I saw a CTS-V come back from an audio shop with all of the front airbags blown because the idiot installing the stereo probed the airbag wire. The owner was a real douchebag though, he was having the rear end of his poor CTS-V replaced for the THIRD time.
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C.D. Ward 4:00PM (3/28/2008)
Actually that is a common issue on the CTS-V. GM allegedly refuses to have a recall on it or replace it with one that doesn't explode.
Richard Warren 3:17PM (3/28/2008)
Having spent many years in the service and parts end of this business and service and parts director of 9 Honda stores:
I'd like to introduce our Service and Parts manager Mr. Ben Dover.
44 hours labor? Sorry, but flat rate on a dash replacement is about 4 hours and that includes transferring everything, lets give the tech the benefit of the doubt and give him 12 hours. Most of the items noted on the parts invoice are attached to the dash.
It also proves something known for years, sometimes that nice aftermarket stuff that calls to you isn't the best option. Over the years I've seen a lot of terrible jobs, but also some very clean and well done, it all depends on who's doing the work.
As to that estimate? I'd get a second opinion.
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Lithous 4:03PM (3/28/2008)
I don't understand the numbers.
"Labor 51.0" (51.0 handwritten) is that 51 hours for the work or rate per hour? If it is hours then it doesn't equal the 44 or even the 44+5 for labor and diagnositcs listed above. Also, if it is number of hours to do work then $4845 would be $95/hr labor, correct? Maybe $95/hr is the rate for Honda but it seems high.
If it is $51/hr then 44+5 hours of labor (labor+diagnostics) comes to $2499.
cardezinarguy 2:01AM (3/30/2008)
That was the first thing that crossed my mind as well. I think the repair shop is trying to screw him much harder than Circuit City did.
stephen.sweitzer 3:27PM (3/28/2008)
I don't have much sympathy for the Civic/Circuit City guy. That's just natural selection weeding out the idiots put asinine stereo systems in their cars.
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John 8:58PM (3/28/2008)
while this seems a bit naive to say, I agree.
I get so sick of hearing people blast their stupid stereos....I do not want to listen to your crap, I don't have a radio in my vehicle, on, and turned up to listen to your garbage......
I have no sympathy that this happened.
and on that note, it is also a good example of why I do my OWN work to my vehicle, apparently VTECnical wasn't man enough to learn how to install something as simple as audio equipment on his own car......
Mike 3:27PM (3/28/2008)
So they lost or broke all the stuff on this list? There's glass on there- what's that for?
If they lost all this stuff (and why the hell would they have taken half of it out for a radio install anyway) then I can understand, but this looks like a pretty lengthy list of parts to repair a wiring harness and maybe a few shorted electrical components. Plus the CC store is in IL, while the dealer is in NY?
Something doesn't jive here.
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tankd0g 3:36PM (3/28/2008)
I've seen many a windshield cracked by alarm installers trying to force the antenna wire along the pillar and through the head liner without removing any parts...
Mike 5:08PM (3/28/2008)
I didn't see any damage in those pics but even if that was the case, I still call BS. There's just too many parts and as someone else has already called out- WAY too much in labor hours to do this repair.
Also, how the hell did the car make it the 13 hour, 900 mile drive from the Northern Suburbs of Chicago to Glen Head NY if it was unsafe to drive and with damage to instrumentation?
Me thinks some Civic kid just wants a turbo kit in addition to the actual damages done or the dealer in NY is about as crooked as they come.