Monney Car Audio  (Daly City, CA store)

Date: July 18, 2000

Service Provided: Installation of front component speakers.

Complaint: Two hours after dropping off my car for the install, I called them to see if it was ready for pickup. It was not, and the manager told me that it would not be ready until the next day because of complications with another customer's car (they fried the electrical system on a '99 Chevrolet Silverado...guess that should've been a warning). I picked up my car the following morning and drove it home, where I discovered that the driver's side kick panel was broken in three places and the central locking system no longer worked. I also discovered that the driver's side inner door handle was cracked, which broke off 10 minutes later (forcing me to open/close the door from the outside handle. And to make matters worse, they didn't even install the speakers correctly: There was now a loud speed-dependent whine from the passenger side speaker.

I immediately returned and told them of these flaws. The service manager told me that the kick panel and door handle was already broken, but they would take a look at it as a courtesy. They "fixed" the kick panel by taping it together but told me that the door problems were my fault. Furthermore, they refused to fix the speaker noise, citing a defective speaker as the problem and told me to call Rockford Fosgate for help.

I ended up rewiring the central locking system myself, buying a new door handle, and relocating the front right crossover (which was the source of the noise). The clincher? The person who installed the speakers, whose name is Lito, owns an '84 318i. It's not like he didn't know how to work on these cars.


9/16/03 UPDATE: This Monney location went out of business sometime in early 2002. Ha!