Bethesda hangar 2019 - torque seal vs signed paperwork, which one holds up in court?

3 comments

3 Comments

Tara it was actually orange torque seal on yours not blue right? I mean either way you're both right about paperwork being safer but just wanted to clarify the color thing since I've seen shops argue over that before lol.

campbell.tara3d ago

Swear to god, I had almost the exact same thing happen at a dealership last year... torque seal on a brake line was bright orange and fresh, but the paperwork showed a completely different part number and date. It's such a mess when you try to prove what actually got done, especially if the tech wrote down one thing but slapped the seal on there from another job. Ended up having to take it to a third party shop just to get them to confirm the seal was wrong, cost me an extra 200 bucks. Really makes you wonder how much of that stuff actually matches up in real life...

jakeb253d ago

I had a 2018 Ford F-150 in my shop a couple months back where the torque seal looked perfect, bright blue and everything, but the paperwork from the dealer said the transmission fluid was changed at 60k miles. I pulled the dipstick and that fluid was dark brown and smelled burnt, no way it was fresh. Cost me a whole Saturday afternoon to run it through a third party shop to get a signed statement saying the seal was fake or reused. I get that torque seals are a quick visual check, but I have seen more than one case where a seal was slapped on from a different job or just plain faked. Signed paperwork with dates and part numbers beats a colored dab any day in my experience, but good luck getting anyone to actually enforce that without a legal battle. Your mileage may vary, but that $200 you spent sounds like a bargain compared to what I have seen people get stuck with.