I’ve Been Wronged By A Boise Business and Don’t Know What To Do About It
This is more of a personal post than usual but this has been eating at me for awhile and I am not sure what to, so here we are... First a little about me. I am typically a very positive person. I also pride myself on honesty, even in situations where lying would have made life easier. However, like my mother, I don't like confrontation. I will take a situation head on when needed (I'll go mama bear in a second if needed) but for everything else, I don't usually choose a fighting path. This situation however has me frustrated and I don't know how I should handle this. Push the business harder? get a lawyer involved? or is it time to walk away and just handle it myself?
I love my Mazda CX5, it is a 2019, I bought it gently used about 2 years ago and plan to have "The Spaceship" as my 7 year old named it, for quite some time. The only upgrade that I really wanted was to have the windows tinted. They had 0 tint and it makes a big difference especially in the summer in keeping a car cooler. I also don't like feeling like I am in a glass bowl and everyone can see me all the time. Last year I was focused on paying off the rest of my credit card (success!) and wouldn't let myself spend money on anything extra until they were finished. It sounds silly but getting my windows finally tinted was my mental self reward for paying off my credit card finally. This was no small thing for me, I was very excited.
I was recommend a place so I called and made an appointment. My friend Michelle followed me there in her car and waited while I dropped mine off. All the while facing my car in the parking lot. I bought the upgraded tinting that blocks more of the UV rays and also paid for the tinted visor that goes over the top part of the windshield. The woman working at the front desk came out to the parking lot with me so she could mark how low I wanted the visor tint to go on the front windshield. To make this clear, as I was dropping the car off and putting it in this companies care the employee walked out with me and was looking right at the windshield and discussing the visor with me. My friend Michelle was waiting in her car in the parking lot this whole time.
I am told that it will be 4 hours or so and to come back to pick up my car that afternoon. So I go back to work, go about my day, have a friend take me to get my son from school then drop us off to pick the car up. It was hours after we were told the car was going to be done, that it actually got done. Which, ok, I get it another project took longer than expected, things happened. While internally a bit irritated, I was still so happy I was finally getting this done and my son and I stayed semi entertained in the waiting room watching discover channel. However it made us late for my his learning center, which I was under the impression we would have plenty of time for. All and all the full tinting was about $450.
Once they finally pulled my car around, I saw the back and the sides which all looked fantastic. I was also in a hurry at this point and made sure my boy was buckled in the back and then I hopped in and we headed to learning center. I walked around the back of the car, not the front. We started driving and within a few miles the sun hit my windshield at the right angle and I saw the crack with the light reflected off of it. Until I got out of the car and really looked though, I had no idea how bad it was.
We were more than halfway to learning center so I stayed the course, I dropped my son off and pulled my car around to a Walgreens parking lot. Then got out to look. The crack goes ALL the way across the bottom of my windshield. From drivers side to passenger side, nearly three feet across. A portion of it on the drivers side comes up over the line of view (the part that caught the sun) but the majority of the crack does not. It is however definitely visible all the way across from the outside.
I called right away, but we were the last car of the day and they closed after we left. So I left a voicemail describing what happened. I heard nothing back the next day. So the following day I called again, this time when I knew someone would be there. I spoke to the same woman who helped me and saw my car in the parking lot. She deflected, and acted like there was no way that could have happened and she is sure that if it did that the people working on the car in the back would have said something. I asked to talk to the owner, he was not helpful at all either. I know that they have a video camera where they do the work so I asked that it be reviewed. At this point I am still assuming that I am dealing with a responsible business owner who is willing to take responsibility when something is clearly wrong. However that has clearly not been the case.
This back and forth has gone on and on, where I wont hear from them for days or weeks and then I reach out and they act like they are working on it. It has even gone so far as the gal at the front to have me text her a picture of my vin number so that her 'windshield guy' can see what glass I need. Then again I didn't hear back for weeks, when I reached out yet again she told me the price of the windshield would be $350 and that they would split it with me. I'm sorry what!? Even at this point there has been 0 follow up since that and every time I do talk to them, they make it seem like it was my fault the windshield cracked. Don't you think the woman who worked there would have noticed a massive 3 foot crack going across my windshield before taking the car back to get worked on? Why on earth would I pay to have a massively cracked windshield tinted in the first place?
So what do I do now, they clearly are not going to help me on their own and what was supposed to be an exciting and positive thing for me has turned into a stressful and negative part of my life that I get reminded of every day in my car. So should I just buck up and oh well and just pay to get my windshield replaced and never deal with them again or fight it?
I will say that the tinting job itself was well done, I have no bubbles, not issues with the tint job but there is no way that they didn't crack my windshield whether the workers realized it at the time or not. See below for photos and let me know what you think I should do.