Hyundai Accent Taken for a Ride Whilst with The Workshop

I live in a NSW town of about 5000 residents. I needed to get 4 new tyres for my car.

A tyre fitter in town that I never used before, drops customers back home and / or picks the car up from the home and drops it back when the job is done. Tyre fitter is exactly 1km from my home.

I had the company come and pick my car up and drop it back. I love my humble car and told them to look after it as I don’t like leaving my car at the mechanics or lending it to anyone after some minor damage done previously. They reassured me. They brought my car back with brand new tyres as ordered, so I paid them and got the receipt.

I parked it in its normal spot in my drive and noticed that it had done 6km since being away - it should have done about 2. I'm a bit livid. Should I call them up and ask where they took my car (possibly to get lunch?) or should I leave it and just wonder for the rest of my life where it was for those extra 4 km?

closed Comments

  • OP needs. To learn how to be objective and handle small things.

    It’s a requirement to test drive vehicles especially after changing all four tyres in case they weren’t fitted properly as you now have four times the chance of something going wrong in case the guy did a bad job. Sleep. On. That.

    Anyway normally when any Tyre place chances four tyres they also run it through a dump like machine to see how the tyres go at speed in case something genuinely is wrong with the tyres or wheel change

  • another case for mulder and scully
    TRUSTNO1

  • I feel you OP. When I picked up my new Yaris recently it had about 20kms on the clock. I was expecting a new car with 0kms. I am going to ask for a refund or take them to the High Court.

    • Agreed. They should start the odometer from -50Kms so that the dealers can drive it up to zero and then handover

    • Should have called the prime minister!

  • +1

    Hey mate, I took it for a drive to make sure that the the tyres were balanced and fitted properly. Just went up the 100 zone for a couple of minutes. Then I tightened recycled the nuts with a torque wrench.

    Next time I will let you do the test drive.

  • +1

    I think it's obvious what your car was used for. The boss used it to drive the other worker to and from picking up other peoples cars. I dropped my car off at a dealers for a service once and received a ride to work from them, I asked the bloke driving me to work who's car this was and he said "oh it's just another car in for a service". I said that's nice I suppose you will be using my car as a taxi as well. He went quiet and didn't reply. I didn't go back there for a service again.

  • 4kms is nothing, but ask them and let me know

  • Why not just ring and ask them?

  • +1

    All of this over a Hyundai Ascent.

    Amazing stuff lol.

    I actively encouraged my mechanic to give my old Supra a fang to identify any niggles. Worth 5 times your car and had 5 times the power lol.

    • It’s a Hyundai Accent not Ascent.

      It seems you and some others here value cars by the price it can fetch and how big the engine is etc- a materialistic perspective . My value system doesn’t amount to how expensive it is or if I can break the law taking it over 110km imagining I’m Mr Hotshot driving round Mt Panorama on a daily basis.

  • +2

    A 4k drive is actually a good thing. Far too many shops will align the car and then shift it to the parking area for you to collect.
    A good tyre fitter will take the car for a short drive - taking a few turns, roundabouts, etc. to get everything to 'settle' and then put it back on the alignment rack to make sure it's still within tolerance.

  • +1

    I had smash repairers do this to my car and basically either drove it themselves or loaned it out, it came back with new damage, and they refused to fix all of the new damage but did fix some of the new damage. The other parts of the new damage was close to previous old scratches and dents, so they just claimed it was always there even though their own photos show that when i dropped the car off, that damage wasnt there. It was NRMA and their recommended repairer in Campsie, Rigoli smash repairers, even the cabbie that dropped me off there told me dont use them as they are dodgy and he had bad experiences with them. It took me 4 weeks to get small damage on a toyota yaris fixed, they were hopeless and in the end i drove away with some new damage as well. i told nrma all about it, they said they will take it as feedback but nothing happened.

  • +1

    Not sure what is worse, these posts or me procrastinating to read these posts 😉

  • +1

    I'm not going to read all the answers. But if you got 4 new tyres and you love your car,b then you got a wheel alignment.

    One test drive to see how the car drives after the tyres are fitted and to be put on the bridge for alignment, one test drive after the alignment to check. 1 out of 10 alignments end up with an off centre steering wheel, so minor adjustments and third and last test drive.

    Then, the boss who needs to properly manage his time went to deliver two cars, yours and someone else's. The other person's car for delivered first.

    4km show that it was driven just the necessary distance. It is a car FFS just get over it.

    • -1

      Yes, I was aligned. But I didn’t know it needed a road test, until some answers pointing in this direction.

      • +1

        Then you shouldn't be trusted with over 1 ton of metal on the roads.

        Even my wife knows this.

  • Really?

  • +1

    So, on the one hand people always say "there's no such thing as a stupid question" then on the other, a person gets roasted for asking…(I'm guilty of it though…from all perspectives)

    • +2

      As an old mentor once taught me - there's no stupid questions, just stupid people.

    • +4

      It isn't the question per se. But the evident accusatory way that is was presented.

      More like a passive-aggressive way to accuse the tyre shop of doing something dodgy. While pretending to just being curious.

  • +1

    Op, you must have a real hard time watching the car scene from Ferris Buellers Day Off :)

    • No, it’s not my car AND ITS ONLY A MOVIE!

      • Actually, it's a documentary drawn from the real life events in John Hughes youth.

  • OP, stick to cycling

    • I gotta do 700km per week for work atm, that's not a viable option.

      • +3

        And you are bitching about 4 extra km? hahaha

        • The amount is not the issue, its where it was and what it was doing during those 4km. And I'm enquiring not bitching. So many vultures on this thread.

          • @Of Aquitaine: but youre not enquiring. People are giving you logical answers and you keep ignoring them and expecting something else????

            • +1

              @k-rokfm: What OP is doing/did is omitting the truth and the circumstances surrounding. If they had have come on yesterday and told up that it was 4 tyres AND a wheel alignment, the answers would have been more informative.

              OP also, after omitting these crucial details, went on to accuse the tyre shop of joy riding in his car and using it as a UberEats lunch delivery wagon for the workshop.

              OP also omitted the make and model to cover up the fact that it wasn't a car that people would want to joy ride in. If OP said it was a new Mustang or a HSV, a AMG A200 (with all the bells and whistles), this may have lead to a reason why it was taken the long way home. But a Hyundai Accent?

              OP has bought this tirade upon themselves for being deliberately misleading in the hope that everyone would validate OP's outrage, and no one did.

              And every time OP seems to reply, a new piece of the truth comes out. The gift that just keeps on giving.

              its where it was and what it was doing during those 4km.

              Being road tested for steering alignment after it was adjusted.

  • Probably to do burnouts on the old tyres before they get trashed…

    4km of burnouts is only a few mins.. so I wouldn't stress.

  • Thanks for the constuctive answers from those who provided those, and to the rest of you nasty peeps - See ya, don't wanna be ya.

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