Circuit City does $12K worth of damage to a car while installing a GPS, won't pay up
If you're thinking of getting Circuit City to install your new GPS in your car, think again -- this poor guy had $12,119 worth of damage done to his Civic by the Circuit City contractor (Honda's declared it an undrivable fire-hazard), and now Circuit City is telling him it's not their problem, he needs to take up his beef with their bureaucratic third-party insurance company.
Link
Circuit City caused $12,119 worth of damage to VTECnical's 2007 Honda Civic while trying to install a Pioneer AVIC Z2 navigation system. Honda later declared VTECnical's car a fire hazard and told him it was unsafe to drive. Despite destroying the car's heater ducts, stock wiring harness, and dashboard, Circuit City has refunded only $3,190, and insists that VTECnical speak exclusively to their third-party insurer.
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What's so sad is how incredibly simple of a job that SHOULD have been. I installed a nearly identical unit in my own car in about 4 hours. The majority of that mess is because of their decision to hack and splice instead of waiting for that (less than $20 retail) adapter. Otherwise, you only have to splice (in a more professional manner) two wires if I remember correctly. (One to your speedometer to measure speed, and one their lawyers require you patch into a brake signal light so as to prevent you from programming while driving.) Otherwise it's so "plug and play" it's silly. What a shame.
Personally I think the real scandal here is that Honda won't let you splice wires on your own car. The install was clearly shoddy, but no way was it $12k worth of shoddy, and there's almost no way it was so shoddy that its a fire hazard. I mean come on, the wires are either in danger of shorting out or they're not, and from watching the video in the link I'd say the splices look clean and, dare I say it, professional. I see that the diagnostic note says the wires were shorting out, but I don't believe a word of it since that note also quotes 5 hours of "diagnostic" work.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that the installer should have used that adaptor, but come on people, hacking up car wiring for stereos and whatnot is all part of owning a car, and if you've ever had anything installed by a car audio shop, they likely did quite a bit of hacking.
This is the car stereo equivalent of getting into a parking lot fender bender and having a $5,000 bill, none of which you'll pay for.
Six grand for replacement parts? Five grand for labor? Nearly another grand for taxes? With only the video to go by, a part of me wants to scream out there must be a cheaper way. And honestly, 51 hours for labor? Maybe if you were rebuilding an engine...but simply fixing up a few wires and the dash? Twelve grand is more than half what an SI is even worth!
After about an hour I think I'd just take the car back. I've been in much less crappy situations with my car, and have told the people out right, "Your time is up".
I wish incidents like this would get more exposure so the general (read- trusting) public would finally learn that the expert installers at CC, Best Buy, and others are nothing more than poorly trained high school students.
The CC employee(s) involved should be fired and the guy should have his car repaired to stock specifications.
Per Wrybread's comment -- this seems to be a collision of institutional microgreed. Best Buy's daft installers botch a job to save $20 in parts (or the wait to get them) and the local repair shop smells blood, knowing there's an insurer somewhere who will pay in full and that Best Buy Corporate isn't paying attention anyway (as usual).
Well, looks like I better buy that 50" plasma from a different store then!
I haven't owned a car in a long time, but why would Circuit City tell you that YOU had to deal with their insurance company? Shouldn't THEY pay to get it fixed and then deal with their insurance company to get reimbursed?
Destroying a new car's heater ducts, stock wiring harness, and dashboard sounds like sufficient damage to go into 5 figures to me. People locking in on that part of the story are missing the point.
Circuit City, hailed as a "Good to Great" company by Jim Collins just a couple of short years ago, managed to eff up this car beyond what I would have thought possible. What morons at CC would refuse responsibility for this eff-up? Who in their right mind would let CC install anything in their car after reading this?
Circuit City can't be trusted with your property. That is the point. So noted.
I also find it funny that a company like CC is hailed as a genius company only to screw up royally after the book is published. Another example: The book "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" made a hero out of EDS' CEO Dick Brown, who in fact led the company to ruin shortly thereafter, resulting in his dismissal and humilation of himself, the company and cratering of its stock price.
Seriously, someone should write a book lampooning Jim Collins' book, listing all the supposedly awesome companies that have now officially suck...and call it "Success to Suck-ess" or something...
@rane
My cousin - a professional mechanic for Mazda - spent over 15 hours searching for a short in our (older model) car. He wasn't being paid, so I know he wasn't trying to bulk up a bill.
According to him, wiring is the most time consuming bit to fix, even more so when you have to disassemble bits and pieces to get to the wiring in the first place (not to mention having to take out and test all the electronics, to make sure they aren't the problem)!
Add their standard "labor" pratices (no matter how quick they finish a job they bill you a minimum number of hours, defined by how long it would take an average mechanic with out power tools to complete) and I can see how it ballooned to 50+ hours.
Well, I guess this is what happens when a company fires all the experienced employees because their salaries were too high. We'll be hearing more Circuit City stories like this.
CC busted up my dash pretty badly earlier this year as well, though I sadly didn't follow through enough to make a story out of it. I was told I'd be contacted by insurance the following day and, barring that, the store manager would call me. Neither happened. I was in the store a few days later and spoke to him again, was again promised a personal call after checking with insurance. Still never happened. A week later, same thing. Last couple times I tried I couldn't even get a manager on the line but was promised callbacks.
I had bigger problems at the time and just let it die, but I figure I should at least warn people that this story isn't an isolated incident.
Ah, the joys of being an insurance professional. He shouldn't bother dealing with their insurance company. He should file a comprehensive or other than collision claim with his own insurance company. He'll have to pay the deductible initially, but then his insurance company will go after their insurance company. As soon as it's lawyers vs. lawyers, things get resolved very quickly. He'll then receive a check to reimburse him for his deductible.
$12K? Seems rather high. I wonder what the dealership charges for an oil change? $500?
I've wired up a couple of classic cars, much much simpler than a new Civic, and it's a terrible job. Awful, awful stuff. I don't know that it would justify throwing the whole car away, but if would take many tens of hours of work to completely rewire a Civic.
As for what he should do, don't bother with the insurance company or the store manager. Take CC directly to small claims or file a pro se tort action in your local superior court with the help of the self-service office. These people only understand one thing: threats with real force behind them. Bargaining for fairness is, alas, pointless.
I've stripped a relatively modern Accord's dash and wiring before, and it was amazing how many hundreds of wires there are. Replacing the heater ductwork would require removing the steering column, center console, instrument panel, and entire dash. That takes anyone many, many hours of work. On top of that, they apparently damaged his windshield, roof, both door panels, center console, cup holders, and much trim with prying and such.
Nothing on the estimate looked inflated to me, assuming the damage was done. Keep in mind this car had 700 miles on it when they got their mitts on it.
What's the big deal? Isn't this what lawsuits are for? As if any jury in the land would side with Circuit City.
I stopped going to Circuit City years ago because their employees don't know the first thing about customer service (specifically, I'm thinking about the Circuit City in Union Square, Manhattan).