Car Insurance

When cars break down, owners do too - but even Un with no aptitude for mechanics can save money by avoiding unnecessary preventive maintenance.

Nobody likes being at the mercy of an indifferent power - yet that’s the position in which most of us find ourselves when the car acts funny. Then comes that sinking feeling - a trip to the dealer for “service.”

Ah, yes … service. That wonderful process wherein a raturn noise transmogrifies into a $500 repair bill. Usually this is accompanied by a page of mechanical jargon and encoded hieroglyphics as impenetrable as Middle English.

Everyone has a horror story. One fellow I know owned a late-model Honda that wouldn’t start when he turned the key one night after work. The alternator had conked out. No big deal. Undo maybe three bolts, slip a belt off, unplug a wire. Hand tools and an hours worth of labor for someone who knows what to do.

Complaints about new and used car sales, home-improvement companies and auto repairs topped the list of grievances filed with consumer-protection agencies last year, an annual survey showed.

New and used car sales were among the top 10 complaints at 70 percent of consumer-protection agencies surveyed, followed by home- improvement work, cited by 67 percent, and car repairs at 63 percent, according to the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators and the Consumer Federation of America. Online shopping entered the top 10 for the first time.

Car sales have ranked among the survey’s top five complaints for five years as consumers object to things such as misleading advertising, extended service contracts and warranty issues, the administrators group said in the report, which was released at a Washington, D.C., press conference. New-car sales rose to a record 18.3 million in 2002 as carmakers cut prices to spur demand.

“Obviously a lot of cars are being sold,” said Elizabeth Owen, executive director of the administrators association. “The quality and dependability has improved over the years, but sales tactics, particularly with used cars, are a source of complaints.”

Complaints about auto sales also topped the annual list in 2000 and 1998. Home-improvement complaints were second last year and first in 2001 and 1999.

Complaints about cell phones were among the fastest-growing areas of consumer angst.

Internet and e-commerce complaints jumped in 2002 as consumers bemoaned products they bought that didn’t match descriptions or never arrived, the survey showed. Internet service not including online shopping was among the top 10 areas of complaints in 2000.

The association and the federation surveyed 43 local, state and federal consumer-protection agencies, which reported 309,227 consumer complaints in 2002, an increase of 23 percent from the year before. The number of complaints had risen the same percentage the previous year.

Online auctions have proven particularly troublesome for some consumer-protection groups, the surveying groups said. The Office of Consumer Affairs of Howard County, Maryland, is proposing to require some online auctioneers to register as businesses.

The Spanish conquistadors who first colonized California established one of their 21 missions in a settlement they called San Fernando, north of present-day Los Angeles.

Then a valley filled with orange and lemon groves and ringed by three mountain ranges and the Pacific Ocean, there were no signs of the population growth that would ultimately occur.

The San Fernando Valley now holds more than 2 million residents, five 12-lane Interstate highways and lots of cars.

The vehicle population is heavy on imports. Many foreign car companies maintain American offices in and around the valley.

One of the nation’s top Ford dealerships - Galpin Ford - is located here. But the San Fernando Valley has become a near-nightmare tot General Motors Corp.

GM’s market penetration in the valley dropped to 13% by the late 1990s, while clinging to 30% on average across the U.S.

A good rule of thumb, police say, goes something like this: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

San Leandro police Sgt. Jerry Codde is well-versed in a whole host of different scams. While San Leandro has not recently seen many reports of people being taken, he said people should always be on their toes.

With the rainy season approaching, he said, people should be aware of the age-old roofing scam.

In that con, a person will come to the door of a home and offer to fix faulty rain gutters or leaky roofs. The point of the con is usually to draw the resident out of the home so the scammer’s associates can burglarize the residence for cash and jewelry.

“If you didn’t call them, send them on their way,” Codde said.

He said that people should never accept offers in mall or grocery store parking lots from people offering cut-rate auto-repair services. In some cases, Codde said, the scammers will actually inflict damage on a person’s car while they are shopping and then coincidentally offer to fix the damage after the motorist returns to their car.

A good rule of thumb, police say, goes something like this: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

San Leandro police Sgt. Jerry Codde is well-versed in a whole host of different scams. While San Leandro has not recently seen many reports of people being taken, he said people should always be on their toes.

With the rainy season approaching, he said, people should be aware of the age-old roofing scam.

In that con, a person will come to the door of a home and offer to fix faulty rain gutters or leaky roofs. The point of the con is usually to draw the resident out of the home so the scammer’s associates can burglarize the residence for cash and jewelry.

“If you didn’t call them, send them on their way,” Codde said.

He said that people should never accept offers in mall or grocery store parking lots from people offering cut-rate auto-repair services. In some cases, Codde said, the scammers will actually inflict damage on a person’s car while they are shopping and then coincidentally offer to fix the damage after the motorist returns to their car.