somecallmejim
Junior Member
This happened in Minnesota.
So here's the deal, we got a used car a few years ago, and generally it's always run well. My wife drives it (well, drove it - I'll get there in a second) because of it's reliability.
Anyway, we were going out of town, and were overdue for an oil change. So on our way out of town we stopped at a local (non-chain) quick oil change-type place. You know the places, where a bunch of teenagers change your oil. Generally we hate these places, but we were in a hurry, so we just went for it.
Anyway, long story short, about two months ago, my wife calls me on her way to work. She says her car's shuddering and running funny. She manages to make it to work. The car's always run fine, and never had a leak that we've been aware of (we have a gravel driveway, so you couldn't tell if we did) so I'm confused. I drive to her job (which is about 35 miles away) and come to find out that she is completely out oil, bone dry.
Well, the car was still drivable, albeit not a lot of fun to drive, so we kept driving it the last couple months. In the meantime, we were checking oil all the time, and unlike the first year and change we owned the vehicle where the car never leaked oil, it was leaking quite a bit, so we just kept adding oil to it.
So a week and a half ago, the alternator went out, and so we had a mechanic fix it. When he did, I asked him to look for where the oil leak was coming from. It turned out that the oil was leaking from the oil filter. According to the mechanic, the filter looked like someone had dropped it and then screwed it back on. He pointed out that the bad spot in the oil filter was facing up into the engine compartment - in other words, it's not a hole that a rock could have made, it had to be damage that was there before or during the oil filter was there.
So today the car totally died, and this is bad. We're a two car family, and now we have one car. What are our options? Can we take these guys to court? Does their generic liability clause on their receipt cover them? Help!
Thanks so much!
So here's the deal, we got a used car a few years ago, and generally it's always run well. My wife drives it (well, drove it - I'll get there in a second) because of it's reliability.
Anyway, we were going out of town, and were overdue for an oil change. So on our way out of town we stopped at a local (non-chain) quick oil change-type place. You know the places, where a bunch of teenagers change your oil. Generally we hate these places, but we were in a hurry, so we just went for it.
Anyway, long story short, about two months ago, my wife calls me on her way to work. She says her car's shuddering and running funny. She manages to make it to work. The car's always run fine, and never had a leak that we've been aware of (we have a gravel driveway, so you couldn't tell if we did) so I'm confused. I drive to her job (which is about 35 miles away) and come to find out that she is completely out oil, bone dry.
Well, the car was still drivable, albeit not a lot of fun to drive, so we kept driving it the last couple months. In the meantime, we were checking oil all the time, and unlike the first year and change we owned the vehicle where the car never leaked oil, it was leaking quite a bit, so we just kept adding oil to it.
So a week and a half ago, the alternator went out, and so we had a mechanic fix it. When he did, I asked him to look for where the oil leak was coming from. It turned out that the oil was leaking from the oil filter. According to the mechanic, the filter looked like someone had dropped it and then screwed it back on. He pointed out that the bad spot in the oil filter was facing up into the engine compartment - in other words, it's not a hole that a rock could have made, it had to be damage that was there before or during the oil filter was there.
So today the car totally died, and this is bad. We're a two car family, and now we have one car. What are our options? Can we take these guys to court? Does their generic liability clause on their receipt cover them? Help!
Thanks so much!