A Mommy Story

(I don’t like to do this, but I’m totally calling out a company for bad service. Actually, make that dangerous service.)

We are a family of two cars – one small sedan and one SUV. The rule is that we run them until they die, and then we replace the dead one with another similar in style. That means we usually only have one car payment to worry about, although we are often playing the game of “When will this car decide it’s done?” as we squeeze the last drops of life from it.

Our current sedan is the very first new car I ever purchased on my own. It’s a 2000 model and currently has 189,000 miles on it. Yes, I’ve tried to take good care of it to get it to this point. The dealer is fairly far from our house, so for the last year or two we’ve been taking both cars to NTB (National Tire & Battery, a division of Tire Kingdom) for minor services because it’s just down the road.

A few months ago, I had taken the sedan to NTB for service, and while there they told me the brakes would need to be replaced soon. I asked if it needed to be done that day, and they told me it could wait a little longer. Having no money to get it done at that time, I was glad to hear we could wait a little longer.

Fast forward to mid-week last week. The sedan had started making a grinding sound when braking (aka: we may have waited a little too long), so we took it back to NTB and asked them to replace the brakes and rotors. They took the keys and told us it would be done by the end of the day.

When Aaron came back to get the car, they told him that they didn’t change the brakes because the brakes were fine. We were completely puzzled by this – didn’t they tell us last time they needed replaced? And if they were fine, what was that grinding sound? The mechanic told Aaron that the pads were fine and the brakes just had a rust ring on them that was causing the grinding noise. He advised us to “ride the brakes hard” to help clear off the rust and said nothing more needed done at this time. We trusted this assessment and left, happy to save some money.

But the story doesn’t end there. That grinding sound? It only got worse. In fact, braking seemed to get harder – I felt like I had to shove my foot through the floor to brake. I couldn’t be reassured by the diagnosis that our brakes were fine. I’ve been with this car for most of its 189,000 miles – I know when something feels wrong.

Being the constant worrier, I asked Aaron to take it to a different mechanic for a second opinion. On Sunday he took it to a different local shop, asking them to check our brakes. At that point an entirely different story about our brakes was relayed to us. The brake pads still had thickness on the outside, but the inside of each pad was shot. We could see the rotors were damaged, and the calipers needed replaced as well. We were lucky that we hadn’t suffered a complete brake failure before bringing it to them.

So one day and $640 later, my little sedan was fitted with a new brake system that doesn’t make a peep (or grind) and kicks in with the smallest amount of pressure on the pedal. And at 189,000 miles, it runs like it’s barely at 100,00 miles. I didn’t like spending all the money on it, but I’m so thankful to the second mechanic (Firestone, if you’d like to know) for taking the time to properly inspect the brakes and show us exactly what the problem was.

I can’t say for certain if NTB carelessly neglected to do a full inspection of the brakes and instead only took a quick glance at the outside of them, or if they lied to us because they were busy that day. Either way, I’m horrified that such neglect for safety was displayed by NTB. We trusted them to keep our car maintained so that it was safe to drive, and they let us down in a dangerous way.

What would have happened had we continued to listen to their advice? Would we have continued being hard on the brakes, trying to wear off that rust, until one day we press the pedal and get no response as we slam into whatever is in front of us due to brake failure? What if our daughters had been in the car with us? We could have been hurt, could have hurt others, could have been killed…

There are certain occupations that we must place our trust in for our safety. We trust our police to keep our neighborhoods safe. We trust our doctors to make the right diagnosis to keep us healthy. We trust cooks to prepare and handle food safely to keep us from getting sick. We trust engineers and architects to design safe structures for us to dwell in and travel on.

As a nurse, were I to give the wrong medication to a patient that risked a life-threatening reaction, you can bet I’d have to deal with some serious consequences. I could lose my job or even my license. I could also be sued if I caused harm to that patient. But I know how important my job is, and in that case I’d check and double check to make sure I had the correct medication for the correct patient, because that person’s safety is in my hands.

Mechanics are part of that trusted group as well. If our vehicles aren’t given proper safety inspections, our lives are at risk. We trust those mechanics to properly service our cars and tell us when something is a safety risk.

NTB destroyed our trust last week and I’m still very upset at the risk they exposed my family to through their neglect. Small mistakes are forgiveable, but life-threatening mistakes cannot be brushed aside.

I’ll be blunt: we will never use them again, and I caution others to think twice before you put your car and your safety into their hands. Just because it’s close by and convenient doesn’t mean it’s safe.