Firestone broke something during alignment

So I brought my truck in to get an alignment today at a Firestone Complete Auto Care. I have the lifetime alignment from them. I got a call from them saying it should be ready in a bit so I waited about half an hour and got dropped off at the shop. I noticed the truck was still on the rack so I went over and took a look at it. The tech came over and showed me how when he was adjusting the passenger side front alignment cam the metal tabs outside of it had "flattened out" This made it so it couldn't be aligned properly.(pics attached) There was a bunch of bare metal around it from where they obviously tried to hammer the piece back into position. My guess is so that they wouldn't have to tell me about it and just send me on my way! I spoke with the manager and he wasn't helpful at all. He blamed me for being so specific with the numbers I wanted for my alignment and said they would pay for the part and I would be fine driving it until the part came in. When I was leaving it started hearing popping noises in the front suspension so I drove back so the tech could verify the noise. He agreed it wasn't making that before and told me I should probably go to a dealership and have them look at it. The manager came out and when I told him about the noise he started saying it must have been like that before I came in. I just lost it and went off on him! I made him do a write up and put in it that they were recommending I go to Toyota and that they would pay for it. When he came out with the write up it said things like "He states that there is a popping noise heard/felt when braking which HE feels is due to the work performed on the vehicle." When the manager went inside I had the tech write on it that he verified the noise and that it wasn't there before I brought it in and he initialed it. I already sent an email to Firestone corporate and will drop it off at Toyota tomorrow morning. Amazing how big of assholes people can be sometimes. You broke it, fine but do that right thing and fess up!

Funny that with all of the things I have done to this truck so far it took an alignment for something to break!

 

I have lifetime alignment with firestone also. I have some clicking/clunking sound in the front suspension. I can't remember if it started after the alignment.

Kindly update us of what caused the noise and the fixed.

Thanks.

 

Ten to one odds that it was stuck (mine was too) and they beat the hell out of it to loosen it up for the adjustment. The guys at my dealership soaked the hell out of it with liquid wrench and had to practically disassemble the whole thing to free it up. Mostly from salt build up. They use a shit pile of it on the roads here.

 

I'm hoping it is just the alignment cam shifting from the force of turning/ braking since the metal on the side of the cam is not there to help hold it in place now. I will update though and let you know what Toyota says.

 

Firestone sucks, at least in my experience. I put new struts/springs in along with new steering bushings, and then took it to a Firestone to get aligned. They called and said it was all set, and I hadn't even gotten out of the parking lot when I realized it was far from "all set" and was drifting to the left. I went in and told them about it, they had somebody take a test drive, the driver came back and talked to another tech, and then the manager comes in and tells me they couldn't actually align it because one of the tie rods was frozen. They told me "take it to a dealer" and that was that. They tried to charge me for their time until I basically flipped out and started yelling at them in front of all their other customers. Ended up not paying them anything, but the aggravation and time wasted I never got back.