What to Do if a Mechanic Lien is Placed on Your Car

So you have brought your car to a shop. And for some reasons, the repair price climbed higher and you ended with a huge debt that you are unable to pay. The next time you know it, the shop has already placed a mechanic lien on your car. What should you do now?

1. The most obvious thing to do is, of course, to pay the amount that you owe the auto repair shop. If you think there is some form of fraud or rip-off behind the very huge amount being asked from you, you can file a complaint afterwards. As I have mentioned in my last post, leaving your car in the property of the shop could have more expensive consequences—storage fee.

2. If you cannot pay the entire amount just yet, you can negotiate with the shop and ask for a feasible payment plan (i.e. installment) until you are able to pay off the entire amount. Most shops will agree on a settlement in order to avoid more complications. Some of them, however, may charge you for such things as the legal fees incurred in the processing of the lien.

3. Find a counsel who can help you do the best move to handle the situation. If you are not very familiar with how the system works, it would be to your best interest to have a specialist handle the situation. A lawyer can tell you the best thing to do, and he can even find a loophole in the lien placed on your car, which may result in the lifting of the lien.

A lien placed on your car could be a source of serious headache, but know that there are certain things that you can do to get out of the situation. Just follow the tips given here to make everything easier.

Mechanic Lien Part II: Storage Fee

As mentioned in the last article that I posted, a mechanic lien is mainly a shop’s tool in holding a customer’s vehicle in case the customer fails to render payment for a performed repair. But, while holding your vehicle until you give payment may be bad enough in itself, there’s actually something worse: storage fee.

There are shops that charge vehicle owners with a fee for the storage of a vehicle that is kept in the shop because of a lien. So, while you may be trying hard to earn the money to pay for the repair done to your car and finally drive your vehicle home, the amount that you need to pay is continuously accumulating because you are sort of renting the shop for keeping your car.

And, this is not good news. Some shops charge a very high storage fee—one hundred dollars per day. In fact, there are instances when the storage fee equals, or even exceeds, the actual amount that you will need to pay for the repair of your vehicle. This is the reason why it’s never a good idea to have a mechanic lien placed on your car. If you can avoid this at all, do so.

Or, you may want to just pay the shop upfront and take your car home with you, then just contest the repair amount charged to you afterwards. This way, no matter where the case takes you, you don’t have a storage fee to worry about. Other than this course of action, there are other steps that you can take to deal with a mechanic lien when one is placed in your car. The next article will discuss the options that you have and the different actions that you can take if you happen to be in this situation.

A Look at a Mechanic Lien

You’ve heard of a written estimate and an order repair, but are you familiar with a mechanic lien? This is often a part of the repair order, but not many car owners and drivers pay attention to this when they sign any document upon bringing their car to an auto repair shop.

But what is it, really? And what is its purpose? Well, a mechanic lien is a form of a legal document that gives mechanics and auto repair shops the guarantee that their customers will pay the due repair amount. The lien states that the mechanic or shop has the right to keep the car in case the customer fails to render the proper payment. This means the customer cannot bring the car home until the time he pays his debts to the shop. In other instances, he may be forced to sell the car just to pay the amount he owes to the shop or mechanic.

Filing of a mechanic lien is done in court, and this will entail money as the customer may also be asked to pay for the legal fees incurred in the process. Other than this additional payment, the customer may also have to pay for the car’s storage fee (to be discussed in the next article), so he’d have a lot more amount to think about at the end of it all.

Today, the term “mechanic lien” is also used in many other properties other than vehicles. It works the same, and its purpose is similar. If you happen to have brought your car to a shop and the shop places a mechanic lien on it after the repair because of certain reasons, there are some things that you can do to remove the lien—watch out for the next two articles for more discussion on this.