Shop damaged my car and wants me to pay
Shops sometimes break parts during routine service—like stripping lug nuts or snapping control arms—and then deny fault or try to bill the owner for the replacements. This leaves drivers fighting unexpected charges or suffering dangerous vehicle failures, like a wheel collapsing immediately after leaving the lot.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- People have been saying this in most months since September 2026.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Refusing to pay and disputing the chargesDid this help you?
- 2Requesting an itemized list and insurance informationDid this help you?
- 3Negotiating the repair costs with the shopDid this help you?
- 4Having the car towed to a different shopDid this help you?
- 5Posting photos of the broken parts to online mechanic forums for a third-party diagnosis.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I went in for a routine service check up, oil change and season tire change. Their own report came back clean. The minute I drive away and turn right into oncoming traffic, I felt my wheel collapse in.”source ↗
“Mechanic on the scene found snapped control arm on the right, and a bent left control on the left. The shop is arguing they are not at fault.”source ↗
“They said my lug nuts were tight, and getting them off, they ended up stripping all 20 of them. They want to charge me nearly $400 for the inspection, and lug nuts. Do I really have to pay that?”source ↗
Where this came up
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