What to do if car detailing guy broke my car?

September 5, 2010 By David Bynon 1 Comment

So I just left my car off at the car wash for an interior detail(washing the seats etc). He calls me out of the blue and tells me the check engine light is on and the car won't drive anymore. He says the mechanic next door says its an expensive thing to fix too. The corolla is pretty new (4 years old) and I've never seen the check engine light on before. Wondering if the car wash guy broke something? What can I do?

Filed Under: Answers Tagged With: car wash guy, check engine light, corolla, interior detail, mechanic, out of the blue

Ben Linus

I’d have the car towed to a different shop and have a different mechanic take a look at it and tell you what exactly is wrong. Don’t tell the detail shop or the mechanic who "looked at it" that you’re having it towed before you tow it…show up when the tow-truck shows up and make sure they don’t touch the car again.

If the 2nd shop sees any evidence of tampering with your car to intentionally break something or to intentionally disconnect anything to trigger the check-engine-light (CEL), call the police. Tampering with a person’s car is illegal. FWIW it’s very easy to make the CEL turn on if you want to make it turn on to run a shady repair scam… (pulling a spark plug wire loose or a disconnecting/cutting a vacuum hose will make the light turn on for example).

I could be wrong and your car could have just very unluckily broken down while at the detail shop, but it seems kind of fishy that the detail shop would have a mechanic look at it before telling you there was a problem with your car. It’s not their place to have a mechanic look at it. I’d play it safe and pay to have it towed somewhere else and proceed from there.