Unecessary garage repairs.Help!!!

[danielr]

I'm not defending the dealer to the hilt...

I'm just saying that if the OP didn't give them all the facts available to them then I don't see how it's all the dealers fault...

 

as it happens I work in IT support, and all the time people tell me, "My computer won't start".

What do I tell them? the problem could be anything from a fuse that costs about 10p in the mains lead right up to everything being so completely broken that they essentially need just about everything replacing.

 

In this case the OP had multiple problems, it may or may not have been the case that the garage could have fixed these in one sitting IF the OP had given all the costs...

As it is, the OP didn't give all the facts that they knew, and the garage didn't fix all the problems that they didn't know about. (in the first sitting).

 

Yes, the OP was inconvenienced, but this inconvenience was caused by two things, 1, OP neglecting to give all the information, and 2, the garage not testing that their remedies had actually solved the problem...

 

for 1, it's the OP's fault, so no compensation was due.

for 2, it's the garages fault, so some compensation should be due.

 

I'm not saying that the garage wasn't negligent, yes I'm perhaps being a bit pessimistic, but what do you think that the honest chances are that when the OP goes to a small claims court asking for the first £1000 back, (as they've suggested that they want to). I think that the chances are pretty slim, they might win on some point that the garage was negligent in their testing, but the garage can quite easily prove that the inlet manifold was broken, they can prove that they did fix the oil leak, they can prove that they did replace the cam belt, and they would say that only one error code was presented to the diagnosis software... and that they resolve this error... and that the second error code was only presented on the second visit, not the first.

 

the OP's argument of negligence is relying on the fact that they didn't test their work thoroughly enough, and that their regular garage had found different faults... -which they then failed to tell the garage about. so surely vx are just going to say that they weren't presented with the facts that would have let them produce a more accurate estimate.

 

The vx garage was negligent in that they didn't find a fault that they should have found with more thorough testing. and that did cause inconvenience to the OP. but the fact that the original quote was so badly wrong was that the OP didn't give all the facts.

 

all the work that was done was needed, and did amount to £2000.

 

So the only real problem is that the OP had to make two visits to the garage... Yes the OP should get something for that because the garage was at fault there. but I don't think that the value of the inconvenience is going to be seen by anybody looking at the whole story as being to the monetary value of £1000 (to force vx to honour their first quote for what they saw at that time). I also don't think that the value is going to be all the labour costs of replacing parts that actually needed to be replaced either.

 

Of course I also wish the OP the best of luck in their claims against the garage, but I think that they are going to need to form a more reasonable argument that saying that there were "unnecessary garage repairs"

 

 

as for the first part of your post, I wonder why it is that all the time on these boards if you don't immediately side exactly with the OP and say they are exactly right been hard done by and should be running to the courts for thousands of pounds of compensation that you're accused of being in league with the devil?

[SCORNED1]

Lets not be naive here. Technicians at Vx are trained to work on Vx vehicles. They attend to several Vx vehicles everyday and as such are aware of the problems common to their range of models.

Car is driving brilliantly at the momment, touch wood. 150Bhp back just when i need it. Yes i do have new parts in my vehicle, my argument is the fact that my labour costs could have been greatly reduced if these jobs had been done at first visit.

[heliosuk]

I can see exactly what you're saying here scorned which believe me, I have quite a bit of sympathy with your dilema, but fault finding is not straight foward as I have previously pointed out. In order to nuke the argument well and truely it would be helpfull, irrespective of the posts if you wish as a matter of interest to use who have contributed.

 

I can give an example of a dealer who charged £5000 to fix a fault in the States and all it turned out to be was low battery voltage.

 

I don't think at this moment in time the labour costs you have been charged are unreasonable at anytime. As I have said you need to differentiate between the jobs being done.