Need legal advice
Calling all lawyers (in the present moment I only know one that reads my lj, mhmeln_57, but others are more than welcome to pitch in with their suggestions):
The Full Rant:
So i had a fun Sunday afternoon. Locked myself out of my apartment, for the first time in the 2 years I've lived there (i have one of those locks that locks automatically when you slam the door shut...i went out to get the Sunday paper and left my keys inside, the genius that i am) Called the first locksmith that i found in the yellow pages. Being the "bright" girl that i am, of course i failed to ask the price over the phone first, thinking that it really cant be more than a hundred bucks or so and i desperately need to get back into my apartment (but in my defense, when i called a few other places later, a lot of them told me that it depends on my type of lock anyway and wouldnt give the exact price) Anyhoo, so dude comes by and you better get ready for this, he charges me 95 bucks for emergency service on a Sunday, just for him to show his pretty face at my door, 165 freaking bucks just to drill the door opened and, wait i'm not done, $145 for the lock. Add on 30-something tax and we are looking at a grand total of $439. Oh and did i mention he would only take cash? (this is getting better by the minute, isn't it?) He explained to me that they work with several building managements in the City but my building isn't one of the ones on their list so in these cases they have to charge cash only because if a personal check bounces, they can't hodl the building management accountable to cover it....sort of makes sense, i guess? So then he gives me a receipt, just a nice blank yellow copy which he fills out by hand, no company's letterhead, no phone number, just all my contact info, prices and my signature. Of course a levelheaded person would've questioned all this before signing that piece of paper but i am clearly not a levelheaded person. How i survived on my own in this City for this long without getting my bank account completely cleaned out is truly beyond me at this point.
Still reeling from being "obodranna kak svezhaya lipka", i decided just for the heck of it to call 5 or so other locksmith places in my area and see what they charge. And guess what, more than half of them told me it's $65-$70 to come in (on a Sunday, ladies and gents) AND get the door open, and then the cost of the lock (which obviously depends on the lock but typically not much more than what i paid for my lock, which is $145) I assume we can all do the math from here.
Long story short, so here is the info that i have to work with. The company that screwed me up the ass with no lube is called A Able Locksmith 1592 3rd Ave @ 89th st. For some interesting reason they are also listed as CBS Locksmiths in online yellow pages, and happen to have 4 different phone numbers? Perhaps there's 2 companies working together but all of this is more than a little shady. Although they are listed in the yellow pages both in print and online with an ad and everything so how shady can it really be? I placed several phone calls to them today only to be told "they'll call me back". The hell they did.
Well, I am not going to take this lying down. But i would very much like any advice on what I can legally do to these mo-fos. One idea so far is to march over there ( i do have their address) and tell them I will file a complaint with the Department of Consumer Affairs....but would this really accomplish anything or would it just be a total waste of my time? I mean, I willingly signed that receipt and willingly handed over the cash. So I fully realize it doesn't look very good for me right now. But my small ray of hope is that maybe it was their dispatch guy that decided to be a crook and make an extra couple of hundred bucks at my expense, if their pricing that they have in their shop is different, then i can at least dispute the 165 door opening charge or something....I mean, it's worth a shot, a good chance is i probably won't see a cent of that money but I would still like to do something about this.
So if anyone has any good suggestions on how I should go about this, by all means, don't be shy. Because at this point, I am freaking pissed. First and foremost at myself for being such an airhead. I just gave all the blonde jokes in the world a fresh round of ammo :-/