I was behind on their RSS feed, so I took a look to see what was driving people my way. Well, it turns out that I had the dubious honor of making one of their 'Blog Hoonage' posts (I still don't quite understand what that means) for my experience with Ricart and my Mazda3.

Here's their entire comment from the 20th:

The red flag should have been thrown right about the "one of the dealer flunkies 'backed it into something in the car wash or something'" point, yes? No? [salguod.net]

In hindsight, yes, the red flag should have been thrown. However, the discount I got meant the difference between a used Protege5 and a new Mazda3. A new car with some repaired minor damage? Sounded good to me. Who knew what I'd get with a used car anyway.

What I should have done, and I kick myself for not doing so, is ask for a complete record of what was repaired so I could look it over more carefully. Then I would have caught the door damage then rather than months later.

Of course, they could have just fixed it right the first time. Or the second, third, fourth, or fifth time.

Thanks for the linkage.