Long story and question about ball joints

[rmac694203]

On Friday, I took my 96 to get aligned at a shop in town. After sitting for about 30 mins., The mechanic took me out and showed me my ball joints. He claimed that one side was not properly bolted in and was a little loose. He said they could tighten it up for me for $15 extra. I said whatever and they finished the alignment about an hour later. On the test drive, the ball joint broke and they had to tow my car back. It damaged the inside of my rim and wheel well. Thay told me it would cost $320 to fix, and I said I didn't have the money. I called the mechanic who replaced my rack and pinion a week earlier and he said that the ball joint was not loose at all, and that it sounds fishy. So, my question is, if my ball joint was so bad, would I have been able to feel it while I was driving for that whole week? The car drove perfectly and I think that maybe the shop tried to pull a fast one on me. What do you guys think?

 

[Rope]

If you were driving you car all this time and nothing happen on till this mechanic tighten your ball joint it sound like a fast one to me, one thing you should do is learn as much about your car as possible just incase you run across dishonest people, I'm sorry to here what happen to you, at this point I don't think there is much of anything you can do but to go ahead and try to get it fix. in some like this it going to hard to prove about what the mechanic said. You see I had a similar problem, I took my mark VII to a shop and they told me my ball joint need replacing and they wanted to dig deep into my pocket to do the job, so I took my car to PEPBOYS and they told me they couldn't find any thing wrong with my Mark VII, so you need to find a mechanic you can trust and not some body who think you are stupid to not know any better.