Marvelous Marv

Okay, I had a little time on my hands over the holiday, and my car had been making a funny rattle from the door since the last time I had the door fixed (handle wasn't working right).

So I took the door panel off to try to find the rattle. It wasn't hard to find--the Numbnuts who fixed the handle only put three of the five bolts back on.

I'd also had trouble hearing the right channel of my stereo since I'd had some work done on the speaker enclosure. While I had things apart, I looked in there, and Numbnuts #2 must have thought my midrange wires were in the way. He'd just cut them and taped them off!

Numbnuts #1 was at a small independent auto repair shop; Numbnuts #2 was at a large stereo store that has multiple locations.

That got me thinking--about the mechanic (Numbnuts #3) who tightened down my valve covers so tight that he broke them, and then lined them with some kind of goop to try to make it last until it was too late for me to do anything . Same guy put a fuel pump in my car (it's the @#$ kind that's INSIDE the fuel tank) without a filter. That caused it to fail about a year later.

In retrospect, most of the times I've ripped off have been with auto repairs. I like and trust the guys I use now.

Short of entering auto mechanic school, I'm out of ideas to avoid getting ripped off in this arena.

Does anyone else care to post their experiences in getting cheated, and possibly advice on how to avoid having it happen?

(I did a search and couldn't find a similar thread. Somebody zap this if I've duplicated an existing one.)