I have been having transmission problems in my 2005 Ford Escape due to my torque converter coming apart so I took it to a local transmission shop for a rebuild. After 2 days it was ready and I took it home today. I put it in reverse once and it was fine but the second time I tried to back out of my driveway it won’t go into reverse. It will go forward though. His shop is closed and I am going to take it in tomorrow morning. I have a warranty but it says I am responsible for labor. Is this something I should have to pay to fix if it happened the same day I picked it up?
In my opinion…no. It’s not much of a warranty if you have to pay for the labor while they fix something that they fouled up. Talk to the shop and see what they have to say.
Parts warranty only? Sounds bogus to me. I wouldn’t have used that shop in the first place. Shoot, the labor just to take it back out and apart to see where the shop messed up will be prohibitive. The rebuild kit is cheap by comparison. If that’s truly all the warranty he gave you in writing, then you just got hosed. If it IS in writing, even a court won’t help you much. I agree with @missleman. Talk to them to see what they say.
there is an implied warranty of good work. if his original work was faulty he is responsible.
I’m in agreement with missleman and MGMcAnick if there is nothing missing from the story.
The missing could be that the word rebuild is being applied to a used transmission from a salvage or whether or not certain things involved with a rebuild was declined by the customer at the start.
If this was a proper rebuild with no caveats then that shop policy is a very poor one. It’s also possible that if push comes to shove on this any disclaimer by the shop about paying for labor again could be tossed right out by a small claims court judge.
It was a rebuild not a used transmission and he told me if anything was needed outside of a standard rebuild that he would let me know. He did replace the serpentine belt but didn’t say there were any other problems so I didn’t decline any services. It is a parts only warranty which I probably should have asked about when I got the estimate but didn’t know that was even an option. It is a small local shop in a small town so I am just hoping he cares about his reputation enough to fix it since this all happened within 2 hours of leaving the shop. He hasn’t said ge would charge me, I won’t know that until tge morning I just got worried when I read the warranty terms.
Any shop that doesn’t guarantee their work 100% for at least 30 days isn’t a very good shop. I’m sure the shop will have no problem fixing it without any additional charge. Clearly it came out of the shop this way.
If this were six months past the rebuild date, there’s be room for debate, but I don’t think here is any in this case.
Since it was a rebuild then they should stand behind any problems that surface. I would flat be appalled if they attempt to charge you one dime and there’s no way on Earth I’d ever tolerate it.
Check to see if you have a working manual Low. On a safe road put the shifter into Low; run the car up to 15-25 MPH; release the accelerator; and see if you have engine braking. If the transmission freewheels, the low/reverse clutch is not working and the problem is inside the transmission.
Otherwise the lack of Reverse could be a misadjusted manual shifter cable which is a simple repair.
Hope this helps.