Tomer, first let me say that I am sorry for your "loss" We love our cars, and this stuff is distressing. So, I'm sorry for this rant, and I'm sorry if I agitate you further, but you sound like you could use some perspective from the other end of the telescope:
The following is informed by my approximately 40 years in the highline vehicle repair business. In fairness, I realize you probably don’t have the benefit of that, or you would have likely been working on your car yourself, OR this would have taken place AT your shop, and you wouldn't be telling us about it.
Regarding the sunvisor clip, a piece of aged brittle plastic happening to fall apart if/when somebody touched it, or simply completely on its own while it happened to be in their possession is not even remotely the same as “they broke it” What do you think they did with it to break it? Why would anybody willfully or even accidentally handle that area with enough force to break a perfectly good clip? Generally speaking, if somebody moved the sunvisor for whatever reason and the clip broke, standard procedure at just about any place would be to both replace the clip and tell you about it. Everybody doing this nowadays is too busy to invest even a minute in arguing with an obviously good customer over a several dollar clip.
What probably happened was something like this. Just recently I went out to my friend’s 500 that I have been in possession of for a month or so. What did I discover upon getting in? Two broken sun visor clips and an exploded interior rear view mirror housing, all victims of the plastic disintegration that occurs over time, and too many thermal expansion/contraction cycles. I did not “break“ them. Were they broken when he put the car in my possession? No. Are they broken now? Yes. Do I owe him anything other than an explanation? No. Am I now somehow obligated to pay for the ravages of 24 years time simply because the vehicle happened to be in my possession when these parts finally succumbed?
Here’s a completely commonplace everyday auto repair shop situation: Imagine if he was an ordinary customer, and the car sat on the lot for a week after the work was completed because he was out of town and could not pick it up. He would pay his bill, somebody would go to the lot and bring the car to him and depending on his knowledge of materials, experience with cars, level of trust, and/or basic humanity and decency, he may or may not start yelling, “Hey! You guys broke my mirror and my sunvisors!”
I’m NOT saying you are that guy, but if you ARE that guy, STOP being that guy...
Similarly, what do you think anybody did to cause the kind of finish damage you mentioned? Generally speaking, people that work on automobiles for a living are extremely aware that customers have WILDLY differing levels of perception regarding the overall condition of their car, particularly regarding paintwork and trim compared to when they are bringing the car in relative to when they are picking it up. We know that most customer’s vision approximates that of a glass eye up a duck’s ass at drop off and then turns into a scanning electron microscope at delivery. I can tell you that at larger shops for sure, and probably even at smaller ones, customers claiming damage to their vehicles is an everyday occurrence. At larger shops, it happens multiple times in a day. The interesting thing is, since I often deal with these people directly, I can tell they aren’t lying! They really do believe that all this accumulated damage, most of it obviously aged to an experienced eye, really happened over the time the car was at the shop. They really are believers. The only thing that gets them off this cloud, and funny enough, not even always fully, are the photographs that are so easy to do nowadays. The photos that every shop should take as a protection to you, and a protection to themselves.
Again I ask, what can you conceive that somebody would do in the course of their work to produce these "light" scratches all over? Of all the things you can imagine caused this, do any of them have a reasonable level of probability? Shop damage is almost never, “light“ and almost never widespread. It tends to be very localized and BIG. Someone trips over an air hose, knocks over a jackstand, and the jackstand falls on your fender. It’s big. It can’t be hidden. It won’t “buff out“ and it’s going to take days and dollars to fix. Almost all genuine “shop damage“ is something like that. But what do customers constantly accuse us of? You can choose to believe me or not, but I swear to you, it is almost always the "scratches all over" as if we chose to use the surfaces of their car to litter train kittens.
You think they damaged your car and then tried to touch it up to hide it from you? Well, it’s conceivable, but from my about 40 years of doing this, I know that it is also highly improbable. The kind of guy that carelessly damages your car? That guy usually doesn’t even know that he damaged it, and even more relevant to this situation, he doesn’t care if he did. He’s not going to touch it up to try to “hide it“ from you. He doesn’t care if you think he damaged it or not. It and you mean little to him. The more careful person that KNOWS he damaged your car? He won’t try to hide it from you, either. He will inform you about it and tell you how he plans to fix it. What makes the careful person careful IS his conscientiousness. He really DOES care about you and your car because that’s the kind of person he is, or because he is prideful and his ego won’t permit substandard quality, or he at least realizes that damaging your car and then trying to fool you about it is bad business that’s not likely to end well. Some combination of these things is generally driving the guy that actually knows he damaged your car. Just as with the careless guy, he doesn’t try to hide it from you, either.
You think someone drove your car after hours without your permission? Again, conceivable, but very improbable. People that do this for a living for even half a year have experience, and most of that experience is bad. They know that the chances of something bad happening to your vehicle or your business relationship rise very steeply when your vehicle is out on the road. I’m certain that I can speak for just about every person employed in automotive service when I say that we HATE driving your car even more than you hate us driving it. If anything, most of us hate it so much that we often DON’T drive it enough to serve you properly. THAT’S the actual and unfortunate truth. Just like you, most of us are more comfortable in our own vehicles then just about anywhere else, and driving your car is an anxious experience.
Joyriding? Another constant accusation. This accusation is best defended against by noting the mileage of the car upon arrival, noting the mileage and time of day in and out during test drives and the like, and noting the mileage at delivery. Whether they took these precautions or not, it’s still pretty implausible. That youthful hoodlum that you can just imagine commandeering your car to transport him and his playmates through a long night of debauchery? He doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about our old Benzes, believe me. That GT3 or GTR? Maybe. Our cars? Not so much...
But even this points up an amazing thing about this business and the people and the cars one encounters in it. The guy with the new AMG GTR? He’s the MOST likely of all customers to throw you the keys and say, “Let me know how fast you get it up to! I haven’t been over 160 yet! I left plenty of gas in it for you”
The ones that always accuse us of joyriding? The guy with the 400,000 mile ‘04 C230 with the four tires showing cord and the interior more disgustingly encrusted with biohazardous filth than the dumpster behind the free clinic. He’s actually just here to leave a list of complaints to be checked out so that he can get a new loaner car to use over the long holiday weekend. He will decline all the repairs on Tuesday and not bring the loaner car back until the NEXT Monday. It will be almost as filthy as the car he left for “service” and its tank will be empty to boot. That car and that guy? GUARANTEED joyriding accusation along with, “and look what you did to my tires!” and “You emptied my tank!” The other guaranteed joyriding complaint? The kid with the stripped CLA...
