So I've got an interesting one that I could use some feedback on how to handle a situation.
As most of you guys know, I lost my license back in August because I had two seizures. In the interim, I needed to hire someone to drive me to work every morning, because I need to be at my office at 4:00am.
I have a good buddy who recently quit his job, has no income, and no car (as his recently died). We had an arrangement such that he would have my car for 3-4 months (Jetta), I would pay him $700/month, cover insurance, and bridge tolls. He would pick me up for work at 3:35am every M-F. The only condition being that he take care of the car because we were going to sell it immediately after I got my license back. Throughout this time period I have been referring business to him and helping him out by taking an old full XTR kit and swapping it onto his bike. Kind of as an additional thank you for waking up ass early and taking me to work.
Two weekends ago, it dumped snow in Tahoe, so he and a few buddies drove up there. I had no concerns, as he has chains that fit my tires and has driven to Tahoe multiple times. The following Monday when driving me in, he was telling me about the trip and how at the chain stop they just blew through instead of stopping to put the chains on. I had some concerns after him telling me that, but he didn't crash the car so I didn't say anything. I just commented on how dirty the car was, but got no response.
After two weeks and a bunch of rain, I finally got my license back and my car back from him. I noticed some nicks from parallel parking on the bumper, but they weren't bad so I just brushed it off. The car was still pretty dirty, and there was what looked like some salt around the front wheel wells so I planned to was it this weekend.
I decided because it was so dirty and I didn't have time to wash it myself that we would go to the car wash and have it done. Well wife comes up and asks about the wheel wells and I note that it looks like dried salt, but upon closer inspection it is actually really bad chipping on the paint. I cleaned off the area and on a 1-10 scale of f*ed up, I'd put it around an 8. There are large sections where it had been blasted to the sheet metal. Plus the direction of the damage is both ways, so it is from both reversing and pulling forward. It looks like someone was stuck in an icy, dirt parking lot and was gunning it both ways to get out of the spot. This is something that should not have been a problem with chains mounted.
I have been driving up to Tahoe multiple times per year for ten years and never seen damage like this. It's almost to the point that it looks like donuts in the snow were involved.
The level of damage is so bad that I will probably have to get the sections bondoed and re-sprayed to make up the loss in value due to the damage. I'd probably peg the damage at ~$1000 loss in value (at best) on a $6000 car, but the cost of repair is probably going to be around the same. This doesn't even take into account the assumed poor treatment of the car because of the damage.
On top of this one of the few things I asked him to do was to check the oil regularly because, like every other VW, it burns oil at just under a quart every 1000 miles. At more than one point I asked him to put oil in because you could hear the engine was low on oil. Just this morning I checked and the oil was low again by almost 2 quarts.
I'm not really sure how to bring this up with him and how to handle it, because he did us a huge favor driving me into work every day. Beyond what we were paying him and giving him for free, he might have cost us an additional $1000+ (I'd assume notably more).
Any ideas on how to best handle this? He's a good friend, but how he treated our car, and not telling us that there was damage is so ridiculously disrespectful that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this.
As most of you guys know, I lost my license back in August because I had two seizures. In the interim, I needed to hire someone to drive me to work every morning, because I need to be at my office at 4:00am.
I have a good buddy who recently quit his job, has no income, and no car (as his recently died). We had an arrangement such that he would have my car for 3-4 months (Jetta), I would pay him $700/month, cover insurance, and bridge tolls. He would pick me up for work at 3:35am every M-F. The only condition being that he take care of the car because we were going to sell it immediately after I got my license back. Throughout this time period I have been referring business to him and helping him out by taking an old full XTR kit and swapping it onto his bike. Kind of as an additional thank you for waking up ass early and taking me to work.
Two weekends ago, it dumped snow in Tahoe, so he and a few buddies drove up there. I had no concerns, as he has chains that fit my tires and has driven to Tahoe multiple times. The following Monday when driving me in, he was telling me about the trip and how at the chain stop they just blew through instead of stopping to put the chains on. I had some concerns after him telling me that, but he didn't crash the car so I didn't say anything. I just commented on how dirty the car was, but got no response.
After two weeks and a bunch of rain, I finally got my license back and my car back from him. I noticed some nicks from parallel parking on the bumper, but they weren't bad so I just brushed it off. The car was still pretty dirty, and there was what looked like some salt around the front wheel wells so I planned to was it this weekend.
I decided because it was so dirty and I didn't have time to wash it myself that we would go to the car wash and have it done. Well wife comes up and asks about the wheel wells and I note that it looks like dried salt, but upon closer inspection it is actually really bad chipping on the paint. I cleaned off the area and on a 1-10 scale of f*ed up, I'd put it around an 8. There are large sections where it had been blasted to the sheet metal. Plus the direction of the damage is both ways, so it is from both reversing and pulling forward. It looks like someone was stuck in an icy, dirt parking lot and was gunning it both ways to get out of the spot. This is something that should not have been a problem with chains mounted.
I have been driving up to Tahoe multiple times per year for ten years and never seen damage like this. It's almost to the point that it looks like donuts in the snow were involved.
The level of damage is so bad that I will probably have to get the sections bondoed and re-sprayed to make up the loss in value due to the damage. I'd probably peg the damage at ~$1000 loss in value (at best) on a $6000 car, but the cost of repair is probably going to be around the same. This doesn't even take into account the assumed poor treatment of the car because of the damage.
On top of this one of the few things I asked him to do was to check the oil regularly because, like every other VW, it burns oil at just under a quart every 1000 miles. At more than one point I asked him to put oil in because you could hear the engine was low on oil. Just this morning I checked and the oil was low again by almost 2 quarts.
I'm not really sure how to bring this up with him and how to handle it, because he did us a huge favor driving me into work every day. Beyond what we were paying him and giving him for free, he might have cost us an additional $1000+ (I'd assume notably more).
Any ideas on how to best handle this? He's a good friend, but how he treated our car, and not telling us that there was damage is so ridiculously disrespectful that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this.