I posted a while back about my Kia Forte that a Midas shop wrecked when they left the radiator cap off during their surprise inspection. I basically forgot to make an update but a few people wanted to know what happened in the end.

Firstly, thank you to the level-headed people who cautioned against freaking out too much about it. I’ll admit that I was pretty agitated at the time. There were several members of the Long Island side of my family who really wanted me to sue.

But it turned out not to be that big of a deal.

My insurance rep advised that it was an open-and-shut case and to just wait and see what the owner of the shop had to say.

Shop owner apologizes, takes full responsibility, refunds the money I paid them. They offer to buy a used engine of similar mileage and throw in a warranty, slightly better than the warranty the original engine had. Also, their best guy will be the one who does it, or whatever.

In a couple days they make good. The new engine has like 7k fewer miles on it, that warranty as well, and so far runs fine. Aside from the unpleasantness of breaking down and the initial aggravation of not knowing what to do, it seems like this Midas did what they could to make up for a stupid, yet honest, mistake.

Insurance rep declared this a happy ending, and I should be glad at least that this didn’t require any further arbitration.