Mechanics Abused My Car

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on a situation with a mechanic shop.

I brought my car in to get professionally tuned. The shop told me they couldn’t tune it because their OBD reader couldn’t communicate with the car and that they’d need to crack the ECU. While it was there, I also asked them to take a look at a big oil leak I was having.

They kept the car for almost a month. I called frequently for updates, but it often felt like the car wasn’t actively being worked on.

After I finally got the car back, I checked my dashcam footage to see if they were even working on it and why it was sitting for so long. This is what I found from the dashcam:

• In one video, I saw them open up the panels and check the engine to see where the oil leak was coming from. They decided that they couldn't really do much till the ECU comes back and the part to replace it comes in so 1 of them says they wanted to "hit it real quick". The mechanic then takes my car and did multiple pulls in a neighborhood road, with parts of the plastic panels they took off flying around in the cabin.
• In another video, a different mechanic took my car to his or someone else's house and was driving with no seatbelt on.

This was also before they fixed anything so all of this was done while my car was leaking a lot of oil. Based off of what they were doing before abusing my car, I know for sure they didn't even let my car warm up before doing this either.

My plan was to email them for a full refund on the tune and oil leak and state I have dashcam footage of these incidences. If they don't respond or give push back, I was going to send them the dashcam footage.

Any advice on how to approach this situation?

Location: Virginia