Hell Hath No Fury Like a Smart Consumer Scorned

“In the 33 years I’ve been in business, I’ve never dealt with anyone like her,” said Jim Kizirian, president of Jim & Jack’s auto body and repair shop in El Segundo, of Susan Schomburg, a Los Angeles art gallery employee.

“We tried to help her, but nothing would please her.”

But Schomburg has victories in Inglewood Small Claims Court and then, on Kizirian’s appeal, in Superior Court, and a $4,098 judgment collected from Jim & Jack’s by the Sheriff’s Department, to demonstrate the legitimacy of her grievance.

Dissatisfied with Jim & Jack’s work installing two clutches on her 1991 Jeep Cherokee in 3,000 miles of driving, she did not stop when she got Wells Fargo to cancel $750 she paid the shop on a credit card.

She went on to win court orders directing the shop to pay for all the repairs, a third clutch, at Buerge Motor Car Co. in West Los Angeles, plus partial compensation for the time she had spent on the matter, for mileage to visit the shops, for rental of a loan car and even for the costs of filing complaints with consumer protection agencies.

This is a story to warm the heart of anyone who ever has felt victimized by poor car repair. But it appalls Kizirian, who warned that writing about it could encourage harassment of the car repair industry.

Fortunately, he said, Jim & Jack’s insurance ended up reimbursing the shop for everything.

But he said he was disturbed that sheriff’s personnel forced him to secure a cashier’s check in just one day to pay Schomburg off and even required him to reimburse the sheriff’s costs of collection.

“I gave Jim & Jack’s nearly 30 days after the final judgment to pay,” Schomburg responded. “It was only then that I retained the sheriff to collect.”

One of Schomburg’s advisors, her employer William Karges of Carmel, said of her:

“Susan’s a very professional person. She’s very bright with a lot of energy. If she feels she’s been wronged, she does what she has to do to make it right.”

What she used above all was overwhelming documentation. So often in preparing this column, I find that it’s the customer who saves every piece of paper and produces it in court who prevails.

At one point in this affair, for instance, Schomburg was told in writing by Audrey Scott of California’s Consumer Services Agency that Kizirian had “informed this office that you did not return nine or 10 times [as you claimed]. You returned once, when they ordered the necessary parts for rework and another time for the actual install of these parts.”

But Schomburg had met other customers at Jim & Jack’s, and she was able to obtain several affidavits from them that she had been seen at the shop many times.

She also prepared a detailed chronology of every visit she had made there and every letter or e-mail communication with the shop.

Kizirian recalled: “She kept telling us she had a squeak in her clutch. Regardless what we did, we couldn’t hear the squeak.”

But Schomburg submitted a report prepared by Reinaldo Piedra, assistant service manager at Buerge Motor Car, that said that when she brought her vehicle to that shop, many deficiencies were found in the work previously done.

“On acceleration from a stop, the whole car chattered,” Piedra wrote. “Once the vehicle was in the shop, it was assigned to Tech No. 1862. Tech reported that the source of the chattering was indeed coming from the clutch system. . . .

“Customer . . . indicated another problem with vehicle in regards to the engine temperature gauge being inoperative since the last repair. Tech reported that the wiring . . . was disconnected.

“Upon removal of transmission . . . the following damaged/inoperative items were reported:

“1. The clutch pressure plate and clutch disc were damaged due to the irregular surface of the flywheel. . . . [The] irregularities had destroyed the new components.

“2. The engine flywheel had considerable amounts of heavy grooves and scratches on its surface. If indeed this flywheel was previously machine turned, it was done incorrectly and in a negligent manner.”

And so on, including an excessive amount of play in the input shaft of the manual transmission and incorrect torque specs for the flywheel bolts.

“5. Evaluation by the Jeep technician indicated that these above-mentioned conditions should/could have been first diagnosed correctly and then correctly repaired. . . .”

Piedra, now employed at another firm, commented to me: “Being in this business, I see this all the time. . . . A car has come back. Mechanics hate it, because if they did their job wrong, they have to fix it and they’re not going to get paid.”

Schomburg also submitted to the courts a 1997 “reliability report” on Jim & Jack’s from the Better Business Bureau.

“Based on our standards, we rate this company as having an unsatisfactory business record,” it said. “[Such a] rating is given when a pattern in the company’s customer complaints causes us concern.”

Kizirian told me he considered all this an unfair assessment of a firm that has become an institution in El Segundo and has a contract as the official towing agency for the city. The city’s mayor, Mike Gordon, personally vouched for the shop to me.

Kizirian also gave me copies of plaques in which local newspapers named his business the “Best Auto Repair” facility in the South Bay, and a copy of a statement from the state’s Consumer Services Agency that only two consumer complaints had resulted in a formal notice of violations in the last three years.

Kizirian’s attorney, Robert Adalian, said of the situation:

“Mr. Kizirian did the best he could do and he threw up his hands. . . . They did not receive a nickel from this woman.”

But Schomburg said: “Once I realized I had been taken advantage of, I asked around to see what I could learn and took the advice of people I respected, and then I just went forward.”

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060, or by e-mail at [email protected].