Delgadillo Backs Bill to Require Auto Repair Shop Report Cards
Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo lent his support Friday to a bill requiring auto repair shops to display report cards showing whether they have violated consumer protection laws.
If approved by the Legislature, the bill would set up a system similar to one already used to monitor restaurants in Los Angeles County, which must post a large letter A, B, C or less depending on how well they fare in regular inspections.
“All of us have been to an auto repair shop and we have paid good money for auto repairs that were never even done,” Delgadillo said at a news conference Friday. The grading system, he said, would “tell rogue businesses that cheating their customers will not be tolerated.”
Instead of letter grades like the ones for restaurants, each shop would be required to post a sign in the shape of a green, yellow or red traffic light:
* A green light would indicate that the shop has no record of violations with the state Bureau of Automotive Repair.
* A yellow light would represent civil violations, such as improper invoices or exceeding an estimate without telling the customer. These would be posted for one year in some cases and three years in others.
* A red light would signal that the shop had been guilty of criminal fraud and other serious violations, and would have to be posted for five years.
“You should not feel like you have to guess about the reliability of a repair shop,” said Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach), who introduced the bill last month.
Fraudulent auto repair bills cost California residents some $500 million annually, according to the Bureau of Automotive Repair.
Over the last 18 months, the bureau has inspected 1,000 vehicles and found that about 40% were fraudulently repaired. Motorists who were defrauded paid an extra $770 per car for repairs that were never made, officials said.
Ken Roberts, a spokesman for the American Service Assn., an industry group for auto repair businesses, said he had not seen the bill or heard of similar efforts in other parts of the United States.
However, he lent cautious support to the legislation, saying that it would highlight code violations that mirror parts of the association’s own code of ethics.
