HELP! (long story)

[meathead333]

some of you know that i am in the army and recently came home on my 2 weeks of r and r from iraq and bought a 73bronco. to make a long story short, we couldnt keep it at my apt lot cause of limited parking. we ended up having a family friend(at least we thought) store it on there property which is out in the country. they wanted $150 for 6 mos of storage. i kinda figured they would just offer to store it for free, but i didnt argue, i was in need of a quick fix. plus, the husband was a mechanic and offered to tune up the engine and replace whatever needed to be done so it was ready to go when i got home. this too he wanted extra money for, which is understandable. anyways...when i had dropped it off to be stored, i wanted to put the cover on it cause the seals are bad and didnt want any water in it. the wife told me just to park it beside the house and they would move it and cover it later. well, a week later, it rained for like 2 days my wife told me. i had her call them upto make sur ethey put he cover on. come to find out, the wife said i never told her and that she was having a bad day and didnt want to deal with it right now. i guess my wife told her we want our money back and we are moving the bronco somewhere else. my wife exchanged choice words with her, she ended up saying that if we call her again shell call the cops. so my wife goes and gets the bronco one day with the spare set of keys and brings it to another friends house. now she is saying that she wont give us our keys back and that they already spent the money and wont have it for a few weeks, which more or less to me means i wont be seeing that money ever again. my wife called the police, they told her that the only way we can get the keys is by getting a court order. they also said that if the bronco was still there, we would need one for that also if we wanted to get it back. thank go she was smart enough to get it with the spare keys we had. what a mess. needless to say if we dont get our money then it was only $150, which is still alot, but not to much. i just want MY keys back. i see now they are just money hungry people. anyone have any ideas? who wants to go over there for me with baseball bats and crow bars and get my money and keys back the old fashion way? j/k

[AKLGT]

lol. sorry meat. but in that situation, i'd look to small claims court. unfortunately, w/o proof of the debt, it's he said she said. you're best bet is to keep trying to get your money back from them if you can. otherwise write it off. it'd cost you a heck of a lot more money to go after it than the $150.

[ragingfish]

Judge Judy their asses! Seriously though, I'd say don't go after the money, it's probably going to cost more to recover it than it's worth...get a court order for the keys, or, if you wanna just suck it up, I say get the car's doors and ignition rekeyed and say F them. Rekeying can be expensive -- maybe you can sue them for the rekeying costs or something. I dunno.Good luck with whatever path you take -- keep us posted!

[joatmon]

if they really are low life scum sucking pigs, then even if they give you your keys back, you have to worry if they had copies made

[meathead333]

thanks.....now ill be up all night

[MadBill]

I'm sure Ford commonizes lock cylinders on a ton of their vehicles. A wrecking yard could consult their Hollander reference manuals and sell you a used set of cylinders pretty cheap. On the other hand, if you write off the money, these people are highly unlikely to come after your truck just because they have $5 worth of keys. If they did, it would be simple theft, no court orders or small claims courts required, just a call to the cops. When the ownership was stolen from my Vibe (which could have allowed the thief to con a dealer into cutting a key), I put a pedal lock on it until I could get the cylinders changed. Now I just use the lock when parking in suspect locations in any of our cars.

[ebslopp]

Just send them a court summons. I'm sure they will gladly give the keys back without even going to court.