When Fiona Brooks took her vehicle in for service at Canadian Tire, she expected the same good service and attitude that she and her family had come to expect from the company, but she got anything but.

Brooks said that she took her vehicle in to the location in Shawnessy after she’d spun her vehicle late last year and it needed to be repaired.

She said she paid about $2,000 for the repairs that were completed just before the Christmas holidays.

Brooks says that when she brought her car home, she soon noticed that two of the tires had gone completely flat.

“It was a shock at first because I didn’t really expect to have two tires flat three days after getting my car back. I couldn’t really believe it.”

Suspecting that the repair job might have something to do with it, Brooks contacted Canadian Tire for a tow, at the company’s expense, to deal with the issue.

“I had spoken to Canadian Tire at Shawnessy because that’s the location I had taken my car to initially. I informed them what had happened, that I had spent all this money on the vehicle, we got brand new tires put on in the process and I told them I am now sitting with two flat tires that obviously hadn’t been sealed properly.”

She says that she got into a bit of an argument with them at first, because the company suggested that she had done something to the vehicle to cause the issue, but Brooks contends that that wasn’t the case.

Eventually, Canadian Tire acquiesced and agreed to the tow, taking it to the Beacon Hill location on January 2.

On that afternoon, after the tow truck had taken Brooks’ vehicle to the service station, she called to find out the status of her vehicle and was told that it was scheduled to go in shortly.

An hour after she hung up the phone, she got a call from the police, telling her that her car had been stolen.

“I was really confused that that point in time because I was like, ‘what do you mean, stolen?’”

It turned out that Brooks’ vehicle was reported missing and the employees at the service desk were aware about it the whole time and even suggested they’d informed Brooks too.

“They had known since 2:30 that my car had been stolen. They told me that they had told me about it. I was floored at that point.”

Police told her that, according to surveillance video from inside the store, the tow truck driver had indeed dropped off the key for her vehicle, but the service worker was busy with other customers.

“He went back to helping customers and you can see that someone had swiped the key.”

Two weeks later, after filing a stolen vehicle report and getting a payout for the vehicle that was just marginally more than what she’d paid in repairs, Canadian Tire told her that they aren’t responsible for what happened to her vehicle.

Brooks says she went all the way to the top and still got the same story.

“When I got head office involved, they told me that they aren’t at fault. I kind of sat there and said ‘how can you say that? One, you’re not there and two, your surveillance shows.’”

However, after going through weeks of stress and drama, Brooks said she was told that her vehicle had been found, in the very parking lot that it was reported to have been stolen from.

Brooks says that bizarre revelation just left her with more questions.

“It comes down to, what were the employees doing? Why didn’t they take a look? Calgary police also failed a little bit; why wasn’t there a thorough search done? So essentially for the last month I have been going through so much drama. It turns out that it was unnecessary, if everyone just did their jobs properly.”

Now, since the vehicle has been found, Brooks says she doesn’t know what will happen because the insurance company owns it now.

At the end of it all, Brooks says she just wants to get her money back from Canadian Tire.

“I think that’s the right thing to do at the end of the day. It’s also principles at this point. You know, you run a multi-million dollar franchise, you pride yourself on good work. However, that being said, you screw up, you don’t want to fix your mistakes, you don’t want to do the right thing. At this point in time people in Calgary pay a lot of money to sit and take care of our vehicles. We rely on our vehicles in this city and you value your car, you value your money. Is it worth taking it to Canadian Tire at this point if this is the kind of, if this is what they pride themselves on.”

Police say they’ve kept the investigation open but provided no other comment on the case.

Canadian Tire says that they care about their customers and are continuing to work with police.

(With files from Chris Epp)