Our car needed new Tires, so we took it into the local Tires Plus. What a bad idea.
After choosing the tires and leaving the car in the shop, we soon received a phone call from them informing us that the Ball joints needed replacing, as well as the shocks, plus a break inspection was recommended.
We agreed to have the shocks done along with new Tires and so came away with a bill of $1500.00 after planning on parting with around $400.00.
So, we took the car home, had a change of plan and decided to stay in rather than drive into the city via the highway; which was a small miracle. All we did was collect our daughter from a friends house close by. On picking her up, my husband began to hear grinding noises coming from the front drivers side wheel. The brake pedal then went straight down to the floor, the ABS light came on and from then on the car was not drivable. My husband managed to get the car to the side of the road, got out and found that the front driver's side wheel was falling off!
The next day we had the car towed back to Tires Plus, but only after another independent mechanic looked at it for us and we took digital pictures of the wheel etc.
Tires Plus told us they would take a look at it and get back to us.
When they did call us back a couple of hours later, they explained that they had no idea why this had happened, and that they could not see the loose nut that we and the mechanic had found in the morning before towing.
So we went back into the store with the digital photos that clearly show the very very loose nut on the very loose wheel, that they somehow couldn't see. The service advisor then agreed that it was indeed a loose nut, that it was the tech's fault and that they would fix it for us as well as check over everything again.
If we had been driving on the highway when this happened, its very possible that one of us, and possibly other drivers also on the road, would not be here today to write about it. I mentioned this to the Assistant District Director of Tires Plus, who had called to placate us with $500 off the total bill, a few complimentary oil changes and an apology.
For a few seconds there I thought that I might actually be dealing with a human being and so agreed to hear him out. But then reality stepped in, and slapped me hard when he said the following: 'you know, sometimes these things just happen, like the space shuttle Columbia, those mechanics didn't mean for that to happen, it just did.'
Hmmm, Ford Explorer, 1.7 billion dollar space shuttle. I really believed that the engineering of and safety procedures for creating the motorcar had long ago been discovered and documented.
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