Persistence to Pay $5,200 : Garage Gets Disgruntled Driver’s Message

George Anderson says strangers kept him going.

That’s why he relentlessly haunted a Chatsworth auto repair shop for eight months, parking in front of it in a motor home painted with gaudy signs that accused the shop of shoddy workmanship.

Anderson had the same sharply worded message printed on the T-shirts and buttons he wore every day. He painted it on protest signs that he sometimes got friends to carry outside the shop.

And, day after day, passing motorists on Topanga Canyon Boulevard honked and waved at the spectacle. Occasionally, drivers would stop and tell Anderson stories of their own bad repair experiences with Firestone, he said.

Anderson would thank each stranger for the encouragement. In time, he began writing down their names and telephone numbers.

“I’ll keep this up as long as it takes,” Anderson said last month of his unusual crusade against Chatsworth Firestone.

“Before I take any settlement, I want every person’s complaint on my list investigated. If they deserve it, I want them compensated.”

On Thursday, Anderson won.

Firestone officials agreed to pay Anderson $5,200 to reimburse him for the cost of repairs done last year to his 10-year-old van. And they agreed to handle complaints from the 30 strangers on Anderson’s list.

“They said they will call the people and take care of those who have legitimate claims,” said Anderson, a bearded and balding 50-year-old who lives alone in his motor home. “They said they were tired of my ‘advertisement.’ ”

For several months, the cigar-chewing maintenance man has parked his sign-decorated van each night behind a Canoga Park shopping center.

Johan M. Gallo, a regional consumer affairs analyst for the Firestone Stores Division of the national Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., said those on Anderson’s list will be referred to company-owned service centers.

“We wanted to get his portable billboard taken care of,” Gallo said. “George Anderson no longer has a job as Firestone’s ‘advertising manager.’ ”

Gallo said Anderson’s dispute was with an independently owned and operated Firestone franchise. “I told George it wasn’t fair. People were seeing his signs and thinking it had something to do with all Firestone stores.”

Anderson said his complaint began with a $250 brake job he had done at the Chatsworth Firestone shop in late 1986. Later, the rear wheels squealed and smoked. When he tried to drive the van back to the shop, the rear axle twisted off at the intersection of Roscoe Boulevard and Fallbrook Avenue, he said.

Anderson contends that all the problems were caused when mechanics failed to lubricate the wheels’ bearings during the brake servicing. When the Chatsworth shop refused to make free repairs to the axle, Anderson towed the van to another garage and paid $2,000 to have the work done.

After that, Anderson said, he hired a lawyer to help him pursue a claim against the auto repair shop. But he fired the attorney when the lawyer told him to take his “libelous” signs off the side of the van, Anderson said.

Anderson said he was reluctant to pursue his complaint through Firestone’s regular consumer-relations channels or the state’s Bureau of Automotive Repair. He said he is suspicious of authority because of past run-ins with police over his RV life style.

Gallo said the repair work probably would have been quickly done last year if Anderson had followed Firestone procedures.

Gallo said the reimbursement agreed on Thursday will cover a new paint job for the van as well as damage from a break-in to the vehicle when it was parked outside the Chatsworth shop while mechanics debated who was at fault for the axle damage.

Mo Itah, owner of the Chatsworth shop, said he has been instructed by Firestone officials to pay the reimbursement. But he denied Thursday that his mechanics did anything wrong.

“I’ll be honest. I don’t think I did anything bad with this guy,” Itah said. “But he used the name ‘Firestone’ on the side of his RV. And everybody got upset.”