Had they broken it while attempting to fix it I would have accepted that. Accidents happen and no wrench has a perfect record. This was entirely different.

A seat stay braze had cracked. It had happened before to the other seat stay which was repaired by Trek under the bike's lifetime warranty. I brought the bike to Paul's, showed them the crack, and they told me to strip it down to frame, headset and forks so they could send it to Trek (which had been done successfully eight years earlier in a different city when the other side had the same failure). I brought it back to them and checked in every two months to see when it would be done. Each time I checked with them they told me they had lost my contact information and needed it again. It was a continuous run-around with the bike moving between their various shops and no one ever being available who could give me a straight answer.

Eventually, I got tired of dealing with them. I should add that my wife and I purchased matching bikes back in the early '80s; we never did get wedding rings since we prefer cycling to jewelry. The bike was a great ride and had obvious sentimental value. My wife finally started calling the shop and persisted until she got an answer. They told her it was in their way so they cut it up and tossed it in the trash. I'm not sure I believe them since such frames go for $400-$1000 on eBay, but it may be true.

So, I was left with suing and/or having them prosecuted for theft (in OR theft is defined as depriving someone of the use of their property), dropping it or making sure everyone in the local cycling community knows to not shop at Paul's. Since I can't bring my dead steed back to life, I decided to just be their own personal negative advertisement. I don't really get any pleasure from hurting their sales, it's just that such outrageous behavior should not go unpunished, in my opinion. I hope that every sale they lose is added to the sales of a good LBS. (I personally like Wheelworks in Eugene, which is the same name as the shop in Davis where I originally purchased the 720.)

For the next three years my wife scoured the internet and eventually scored a Trek 720 from the same year as mine that had never been built up. $1000 later I was joyously rolling through the hills on my old ride's brother. As noted above, this one developed the same failure as the other two, only much earlier. An old friend who builds nice custom bikes, Kimo Tanaka, lives in Davis, CA, which is where I was headed when the crack formed. He is cutting off the old seat stays and replacing them. He is also going to change the way they are attached to the seat tube to prevent future cracks. I would have had him do this to my original 720 if Paul's had not stolen it and Trek had agreed to maintain the warranty. Since Trek no longer hand-builds steel bikes they may have agreed to this if they had had the opportunity.

I'm glad it looks like Diolopez will have a much better outcome than I did.