Hi, I'll try to keep this brief. (Hi, by the way. This is my first post here although I've been reading the forum for a while. I've been learning a lot, very fast, about typewriters...)

I bought a lovely little Empire Corona skyriter off eBay, sent the seller packing instructions, and it arrived in perfect nick. Though less than perfect condition, & filthy. I cleaned it up, and unstuck the keys - just about every type bar was sticking, and I bent them all back into shape very carefully. The text is massively out of alignment though, shift characters well above the others. There is a red crescent under every apostrophe as the top of the 8 hits the red bit of the ribbon. There's a lot of shadowing on the text but that might be the crappy little ribbon I've put in? But I thought, I'll just take it in for a service and let the experts do this. 

Got it back yesterday - and it is nice and clean (but then it was when I took it in). The text still shadows; the upper case is still completely unaligned. The red moon still appears under the apostrophe. Nothing looks any different and in fact a couple of letters were sticking, so I've been gently bending type bars again! 

(Also, the riibbon cover really didn't want to click into place; it was just sitting on top and didn't really want to fit. I p ut this down to movement of the body in the process of taking it off and piutting it back on - & eventually got it to click into placet but it's not as good as when I took it in.)

But. This morning I typed put a poem on it, for a clean sample of text to take in to the shop. It looks okay, cute, with slightly wibbly letters, but with unaligned caps, red moons, and shadows. After that, I tried to type a paragraph. On the first line, the carriage started sticking. Every couple of characters in, the carriage just fails to move along when I hit a key. The space bar is useless. If I give the carriage a little jog, it sort of unsticks and moves a little, but then it sticks again with the next letter. 

In short, I now can't type on this machine at all. 

When I went to get it yesterday, I had forgotten the bag to carry it in (the one I had brought it into the shop in), and the guy gave me the typewriter with strict instructions to carry it flat. I told him I was going into town on rush hour buses, to teach, and then back again later, and that I'd do my best but had to get a bag. He said they were out of any bags of that size. So I carried it flat as far as the nearest supermarket and got a strong burlap shopping bag (same type as the one at home), which I then carefully carried it in throughout my evening. When I got home the carriage wasn't locked; I had been flustered in the shop, in a hurry, and there was some confusion over the price of the job, too, which had gone over 'service' and into 'repair', but no one had informed me of this... anyway, no one had offered me a chance to try out the machine, their counter is very high, and it hadn't occurred to me that they would hand me a typewriter in only its case with the carriage unlocked. (The tag also said 'no contact details', and I'm in their book TWO TIMES - as this is the second repair I've left with them - and have been ringing every week to find out how the machine is doing.)

I really don't want to go raise all this with them and have them tell me I've carried it wrong and it's an delicate old machine and these things happen. They seem like really nice serious guys who are dedicated to typewriters. They've both had flu. But my typewriter worked when I took it in, and now it doesn't.

Can I fix this carriage thing myself? 

What do I say to them? I need advice from someone who knows these things. My boyfriend is unsympathetic, said 'Oh, well', and said I should just whack it on eBay; but the thing has lost all its value, and I've just paid for this 'service'!

Clearly I need to take this up with the shop but I also don't want it to be awkward and negative, etc. Many thanks in advance for any insight or advice... 

Kat