DETROIT – A Detroit woman is getting her car back after nearly two months of runaround repairs and a bounced check from a repair shop on the west side.
The breakthrough comes after she reached out to Local 4 for help with her car, currently at Master Car Care on Greenfield Road.
Local 4 reached out to Rosemary Mitchell to deliver the good news on Saturday night.
“I just talked to the owner and he gave me his commitment that he is going to have this done and replaced for you by Tuesday,” Local 4 told Mitchell.
“Thank you, Jesus. Oh wow, thank you, Jesus,” Mitchell said.
It’s been a long journey trying to get her GMC Denali, still sitting in the lot, repaired.
“I just want my car,” Mitchell said. “I am so scared because I am scared to get in it, because if I would have made it to the freeway, I would have been seriously hurt.”
Mitchell took her car to Master Car Care on April 9. She says she simply needed the transmission fixed. It would only take a day.
“The one day turned into a whole month,” she said. “I kept calling, they said ‘Well, we ain’t got no workers’ and all this. They kept giving me one excuse after another.”
When she finally got to drive off the lot, she only made it a few minutes.
“The drive shaft fell out from when they put the transmission in, they didn’t tighten the bolts,” she said.
“And that was, like, immediately after you got in it, right?” Local 4 asked.
“Yes, just a couple of blocks down,” Mitchell said.
She called the shop and was told she’d have to tow it back on her own dime.
Reluctantly, she did. Then, she came back the next day to get a check from them.
“The check bounced,” Mitchell said.
We got a copy of that. The paperwork said “not sufficient funds.”
At the same time, Mitchell found another issue.
“The whole covering of my engine was gone - oil everywhere,” she said.
She needed more repairs.
Mitchell said the shop told her it would take days, which has turned into many weeks.
“Everytime they give me a different excuse,” she said. “They say, ‘the boss didn’t come in, or we ain’t got enough workers.’”
Local 4 got in touch with the owner today and pressed him on this.
He says he wanted to work on the car himself – that’s what’s taking so long.
He also says he wasn’t aware the check had bounced but that he will have cash waiting for Mitchell on Tuesday.
“This is bad business. That’s night right to do people like that,” Mitchell said.