{"id":698,"date":"2007-07-15T23:33:50","date_gmt":"2007-07-15T23:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/the_car_wrap_up.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:45:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:45:33","slug":"the_car_wrap_up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/the_car_wrap_up.shtml","title":{"rendered":"The Car – Wrap Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant to do a wrap up on my tale of woe<\/a> involving my Mazda3.
\nShortly after my post, I contacted a couple of lemon law attorneys about my situation. It turns out that the lemon law only applies to manufacturer defects, not dealer mishaps. I read the actual text of the statute and the fluff PDF the state puts out for the public and couldn’t find any such distinction, but I’m no attorney so what do I know.
\nI also checked ‘the Google’ for word combos like ‘Ricart’ and ‘Fraud’ and the first page that came up was this one<\/a>, a page dedicated to Ricart (which hasn’t been updated in years and they didn’t return my email). According to that site, I was pretty much out of luck. It turns out that filing a complaint with the Attorney General’s office would get me referred to a mediation board run by the dealer’s association and staffed by car salesmen. Mr. Ricard supposedly sits on the board of said group. I have no idea if this is still true, or if in fact it ever was true, but even so it was going to be me against one of the largest dealers in the country. Not good odds.
\nI then took the car into Ricart and talked over my situation with the service manager, the body shop manager and their boss. I showed them the problems I had, the issue with the door seals and how I felt lied to. The big guy did all the talking and seemed generally concerned that I be taken care of. Maybe he’s just good at his job.
\nWe made an appointment and the car went in the following Monday. I got a rental Corolla (yawn). Part of the deal was that I was to get to see what they found out when they opened up the doors. I went down there and it was a very dissatisfying experience. There was no smoking gun, no place you could point and say “See! That’s not right!” The body shop manager tried to play it off in several ways. Looks like someone tried to break into the car. The right and left trim were different. We even checked a very ratty Mazda3 on their used lot and found that not to be the case. He then called Mazda to see if the parts had changed causing them to fit differently. Nope.
\nIn the end, after another week in the shop I’m told my car is done. They did not replace the door skins, they were able to straiten everything without that. I’m skeptical, but when I show up to get the car, they look pretty darn good. I’m pleasantly surprised. They reworked the putty that was a mess and somehow got the seals to line up like they should. I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure I want to know. I decided it was time to move on.
\nSo I now have a car that I’m more or less OK with. I still love the looks, interior and how it drives. One good thing was that they also replaced my stolen rear emblem and touched the paint up for free.
\nI learned 2 lessons from this saga:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Never buy a car from Ricart. Maybe I’m over generalizing here, but it seemed that this was par for the course for them. I’m not just talking about their reputation as evidenced by that web site. I’m talking about the demeanor of the staff. For the most part, they were not alarmed that this had happened. Nor did they even remotely share my feelings that this was out of line and even fraudulent. If anything, their attitude showed that I was a thorn in their side and they simply wanted to do what they needed to get me to go away.<\/li>\n
  2. never buy a car with ‘minor damage’. If a dealer tells you that, run and don’t look back. If you must chase that savings, get a detailed report of that was repaired and look that area over very carefully. Even better, have an independent body shop look at it. Had I gotten a detailed report, I believe that I would have noticed the problems with those doors. I would have also known that the damage was not minor and would have likely passed on the car.<\/il><\/ol>\n

    Well, you live and learn. I suspect that this isn’t over completely. Oh, I won’t have to deal with Ricart again, but as the car ages I suspect that those doors and the other repairs will not age as gracefully as the rest of the car. There’s really nothing more I can do and dragging it out further with legal action is only going to keep me emotionally worked up until it’s done. I’d rather just let it go. It’s only a car, after all, it’s not going to last ultimately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I meant to do a wrap up on my tale of woe involving my Mazda3. Shortly after my post, I contacted a couple of lemon law attorneys about my situation.Read More The Car – Wrap Up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Car - Wrap Up - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/07\/the_car_wrap_up.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Car - Wrap Up - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I meant to do a wrap up on my tale of woe involving my Mazda3. 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