Quote:
Originally Posted by teak81
Trouble is trying to prove it was the mechanic.
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If you lodge a statuary declaration at your local police station it's considered proof. Unless he has the balls to launch one as well but it's extremely unlikely he will. Most don't risk their business/livelihood over the sake of a couple calipers (or even far more costly damage for that matter) and would be happy just to get the situation out of their lives. You'd want to be bloody sure he did indeed scratch them as the penalty for lying on a stat dec is 4yrs imprisonment!
Other thing to look into is a "letter of demand" which forces the mechanic by law to respond in writing by a given date and not ignore/stonewall the dispute until it magically disappears in his favour.
If your stat dec isn't disputed and you have proof that's excellent but the dispute is still through a shop and not a person/civil so you will still have to go through vcat, consumer affairs, small claims as per normal but you'll have the stat dec as your proof.
The letter of demand also prompts a response from him, if he chooses to still dispute the case in his response, then you now have his word on paper contradicting the stat dec as well. If vcat don't sort it out (they should but they're corrupt) then you still have small claims and there's no way a judge would put the word in a letter of demand over the word of a stat dec.