I am going on a trip and therefore I decide to have the front end realigned on my 90 300D, which gets better mileage. This hasn't been done for two years, so I guess it's best to get it done. Carlos, the guy who usually does this with great equipment and great care, seems to be in the hospital, so I call a number of shops. Some want me to pay as much as double ($89.95) the $45 that Carlos charges AND leave my car 20 miles from home and return five or six hours later.

The shop down the street tells me that his equipment can't deal with a caster of 10 degrees (or was that camber)?

Finally I find a guy in Hialeah who sounds like he might have aligned a Mercedes, charges $45 and can do it this morning. So off I go. 20 minutes after I get there Miguel and his bro, a pair of somewhat chubby Cubans are fiddling away with their 'puter games and a skinny Central American is doing the job in the unairconditioned shop. Then Miguel has the revelation that my car actually has four wheels that need aligning and tells me that I need to spring for $10 more. I had been trying to keep the extra two wheels a secret, or perhaps I concluded that four wheels were not too much for Carlos to do in a half hour, and that $45 was a fair price for 30 minutes work.

Anyway, I agree to this, and after ten more minutes the skinny anonymous Centrral American guy is on another car, the chubby Cubans still are playing their same 'puter games, and I get a bill that lists an extra $5.00 for "shop supplies".

Hey, what supplies do you use in aligning four wheels? I have seen many a car aligned and other than a coule of squirts opf WD-40 and a little wear on the mechanic's gloves, I have never seen any supplies consumed.

"It's like a fee for oil changes and new batteries, it's for the environment", says Miguel with a completely straight face.

I try really hard to envision innocent alligators in the Everglades perishing from WD-40 exposure, endangered Manatees choking on used gloves.

I point out that nothing has to be disposed of after an alignment, either. It is as environmentally friendly an act as any shop could perform.

So he admits that there are no materials consumed nor thrown in the swamp. He says that they are allowed by Miami-Dade County to add a surcharge for extras, even a bigger one than he has stuck me for. "All the Big Boys do it" he says.

I have lived here since 1976. No one has ever added anything except battery and tire disposal fees, and I always take the batery with me and sell it to the recycler for $1.50.

I recall telling him that I had had too many bad experiences with Sears, Midas, Aamco and such that I not darkened their doors in decades. In small towns, where shops need repeat business, such places can be honest, but here in Miami each one sems to be intent on screwing every customer once. (And the female ones twice or thrice or until they learn that a carburator cleaning is not a part of a wheel balance. At least on a furel-injected vehicle.

So then he points to the Miami-Dade sign in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole that I as a consumer, have a right to see a written estimate before any work is done, as though this actualy meant that I could be gouged for costs unmentioned when I asked the cost of the alignment. I mentioned that he should have revealed the $5.00 sucker charge when he first quoted his price to me.

I confess, it's only a lousy $5.00, but I could not help sharing this guy's bogus tale with the good folks at Consumer Affairs. I wrote this really polite letter asking for a credit to my card of $5.00 plus 7% tax, a reminder that his bogus charge was unallowed under County law and perhaps an apology for doing a bait--and switch AND a bait and sucker on the same job.

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Semibodacious Transmogrifications a Specialty

1990 300D 2.5 Turbo sedan 171K (Rudolf)
1985 300D Turbo TD Wagon 219K (Remuda)

"Time flies like and arrow, yet fruit flies like a banana"
---Marx (Groucho)