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Do you pay the garage bill when they haven't fixed the problem???


ianash
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I'll stick to the facts:

1. The Bill: Myself and the garage owner discussed the issue like a pair of adults and we came to the final agreement of £50 plus Vat to include the unspecified time that he and his staff had spent on the car during the 15 hours they had it, and the replacement thermostat and the coolant. The bill states parts and labour, not a specific period of labour.

2. Better or worse? Yes, whatever the cause is, the heating system in the car right now is WORSE than it was before I took it into the garage - I'm not "suggesting" it, I'm making a statement of fact. Is it fair and acceptable to pay for a replacement product when clearly the original thermostat in the car was not faulty in the first place?

3. Small claims court: "Tell me Mr Customer, is it true that you took your car to the garage, they charged you £60 and the only result is that the small initial problem became much worse?" Laughed at???

1. More the fool you there then. Why? You made a verbal agreement for one. This is legally binding and the fact that you agreed to pay for the work done, means that you have absolutely no remit in a small claims court. For seconds, you don't seem to have a receipt breaking down exactly how the garage have come to the amount of £50 + VAT. If you accepted the receipt with no breakdown and paid the garage, then you are again mad for accepting this and completing the contractual agreement.

2. "Doctor, I can barely walk - my knee is really sore". "Okay, the MRI scan shows that you have a partially torn meniscus - here are some painkillers, but I need to do surgery to potentially fix the problem". "Thanks for your help doctor, here's some money for what you've done so far, but I'm not able to pay for surgery right now". You continue to walk on your bad knee and totally tear the meniscus to shreds. How is the doctor to blame, when the damage was a) already done, but advice given and B) you chose to continue walking on the bad knee?

Same for your car. Mechanic tries the immediately obvious course of action and it doesn't solve the issue, because you have to try the first "repair" to know if it's the second causing it.

3. See above. You made an agreement, completed the transaction to accept that you agreed to the work done and went away. The problem got worse - well of course it did - the garage said what they believed to be wrong after verifying that it wasn't a the thermostat. Did you ask for the old one (thermostat) back? It's yours after all. Plug it back in and see if it gets better. You can bet it won't and not because the thermostat has in any way damaged the matrix, but because the problem was already there.

Please - take it to a small claims court and prove me wrong.

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Dear ianash,

Can you please stop your whining and go away and get your heater matrix replaced

THANK YOU

Regards,

Jon

ps. I am aware that some of you may find this a bit OTT

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Old enough to have a polite debate without resorting to silly personal comments ;)

Not old enough to realise what goes on in that big bad world out there. You got off lightly, be thankful.

As Silverfox alluded, I'd just love to explain how fitting a new thermostat would make the problem worse, maybe you should have fixed it yourself with all that mechanical knowledge of yours. B)

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ps. I am aware that some of you may find this a bit OTT

Not at all Jon, sometimes you just have to be cruel to be kind. :D

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I don't think I need to continue to emphasise what all these guys are saying, about how lucky you were.

But... My mate took his Polo to a VW Garage. They spent 45 mins trying to diagnose why his stereo didn't turn on. They couldn't work it out.

They also spent another hour trying to fault find his electric window motor which had burnt out.

He had to pay £65 labour, and £5 for a new door seal which turned out to be Duct Tape when we investigated ourselves. But nothing had been fixed!

It turned out that the motor had indeed burnt out. We replaced it ourselves for £40 but they wanted to charge him £400. The stereo just turned out to be a broken wire that I found and fixed in literally 2 minutes flat lol.

Erm... dunno what point im trying to make o_O But basically you did well to only pay that much xD

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Not at all Jon, sometimes you just have to be cruel to be kind. :D

Thanks Keith. It's an honour to have support from FOC's Member of the Year :)

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I don't think I need to continue to emphasise what all these guys are saying, about how lucky you were.

But... My mate took his Polo to a VW Garage. They spent 45 mins trying to diagnose why his stereo didn't turn on. They couldn't work it out.

They also spent another hour trying to fault find his electric window motor which had burnt out.

He had to pay £65 labour, and £5 for a new door seal which turned out to be Duct Tape when we investigated ourselves. But nothing had been fixed!

It turned out that the motor had indeed burnt out. We replaced it ourselves for £40 but they wanted to charge him £400. The stereo just turned out to be a broken wire that I found and fixed in literally 2 minutes flat lol.

Erm... dunno what point im trying to make o_O But basically you did well to only pay that much xD

Cheers Pete,

I'm genuinely fascinated by this attitude that we think we "have to pay" when no fault has been found, especially at full price of £65 as you say. Maybe it's just a British thing that we are brainwashed and too embarrassed to stick up for our rights when someone has failed in their job.

Someone earlier mentioned I should have agreed a fixed fee for finding the fault - good idea but you generally don't expect the professionals to NOT find the fault when you think it's something basic.

Ah well live and learn, at least with all the money I've been lucky enough to save I can go and buy a matching set of thermal driving gloves and woolly hat... :lol:

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Cheers Pete,

I'm genuinely fascinated by this attitude that we think we "have to pay" when no fault has been found, especially at full price of £65 as you say. Maybe it's just a British thing that we are brainwashed and too embarrassed to stick up for our rights when someone has failed in their job.

Someone earlier mentioned I should have agreed a fixed fee for finding the fault - good idea but you generally don't expect the professionals to NOT find the fault when you think it's something basic.

Ah well live and learn, at least with all the money I've been lucky enough to save I can go and buy a matching set of thermal driving gloves and woolly hat... :lol:

Are you not going to acknowledge my previous post at all? How on God's green Earth can you believe that you're actually entitled to have someone look at your car, attempt to help and suggest a solution ... all for free?

Epic Fail. Seriously.

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Ah well live and learn, at least with all the money I've been lucky enough to save I can go and buy a matching set of thermal driving gloves and woolly hat... :lol:

NO

Go and fix your heater.

Lets say one of your mates was a mechanic and they offered to fix it for you. They spent their whole weekend looking at it. However they couldn't fix it. Are you seriously not going to pay him?

Say you have a gardener that comes to mow the lawn. He misses one blade of grass. Are you not going to pay?

Maybe you go to a pub and get a pint of beer. You measure it out and its a couple of ounces short of a full pint. Are you going to refuse to pay for it then drink it anyway?

What if for instance you go to a garage. They only get to do half the job becase you dont want to pay them to change your heater matrix. Are you going to refuse to pay them and then drive off in a car that has benefitted from half the labour and new parts?

The answer you are looking for to the above is

NO

It's like going to a restaurant and eating fifty quids worth of food then doing a runner, and giving the excuse that you wasn't full enough. You could have stayed and spent some more money untill you were full. But something in your messed up deranged little mind couldn't quite grasp that

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This thread ... lol.

Many moons ago when I had my little old Peugeot 106 the fuel gauge stopped working, which I eventually decided to get fixed having ran out of petrol three times. I took it to the garage who had it for about 5 days, found the problem was a little printed circuit board on the back of the speedo which couldn't be sourced or fitted without buying the full speedo assembly. It would've cost me about £350 quid overall to get it fixed so I payed the labour charge of about £100, got the car back and then toddled off to the Ford dealer thoroughly !Removed! off with old cars and bought my new mk6! I got a good trade in value for the Pug actually despite of that, the fact the head gasket was going and that the whole exhaust was obliterated. :P

Erm, I'm not sure what the moral of the story is... At the time I was a bit upset that I had to pay for effectively nothing, but now looking back they spent time on the diagnosis and the fact that I didn't want to pay for the operation was my fault.

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Cheers Pete,

I'm genuinely fascinated by this attitude that we think we "have to pay" when no fault has been found, especially at full price of £65 as you say. Maybe it's just a British thing that we are brainwashed and too embarrassed to stick up for our rights when someone has failed in their job.

Someone earlier mentioned I should have agreed a fixed fee for finding the fault - good idea but you generally don't expect the professionals to NOT find the fault when you think it's something basic.

Ah well live and learn, at least with all the money I've been lucky enough to save I can go and buy a matching set of thermal driving gloves and woolly hat... :lol:

Unbloody believable, truly, unbloody believable. I'm absolutely gobsmacked at your attitude.

Again, I will ask you. Why do you expect anyone, no matter what buisiness they are in, to fault find something that takes time with no guarantee they will get the work to repair the fault and do this for nothing? Are you so young (I've pretty much guessed you're new to the real world)and naive that you don't understand how buisinesses are run?

I'd be grateful if you could answer why you expect someone to work for nothing.

Wait till you have your own house and you phone up a plumber and they say we have a £60 call out fee, christ, plumberworld.com/forums will go into meltdown. :lol:

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Unbloody believable, truly, unbloody believable. I'm absolutely gobsmacked at your attitude.

Again, I will ask you. Why do you expect anyone, no matter what buisiness they are in, to fault find something that takes time with no guarantee they will get the work to repair the fault and do this for nothing? Are you so young (I've pretty much guessed you're new to the real world)and naive that you don't understand how buisinesses are run?

I'd be grateful if you could answer why you expect someone to work for nothing.

Wait till you have your own house and you phone up a plumber and they say we have a £60 call out fee, christ, plumberworld.com/forums will go into meltdown. :lol:

Keith,

Go and take your pathetic patronising, sarcastic comments and stick them somewhere warmer than my car :blink:

The thread is asking for opinions, unlike you I am more than mature enough to accept and digest other people's opinions that differ from my own without resorting to the classic forum abuse and backslapping displayed by yourself and the rather jeuvenile jonny.

Don't make anyore patronising comments about me not understanding life just because you can't deal with someone who disagrees with you.

Thanks for your opinions, I wasn't looking for people who simply agree with me.

IT'S A DISCUSSION ABOUT A HEATER AND GARAGE service - KEEP YOUR TOTALLY GROUNDLESS PERSONAL INSULTS OUT OF THE DISCUSSION.

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Whilst I agree with all sides here I have a question … :unsure:

Should a garage be able to tell if it was the heater matrix at fault without changing the thermostat and coolant? :blink:

If the answer is yes than I feel perhaps being charged for these items is a little unfair and perhaps the garage should have looked at other possibilities before hand.

If they have made the wrong diagnosis and wasted their time and your money trying to fix the wrong problem I think next time I would look at using a garage that might have better knowledge.

But I do think if a garage is spending time trying to find the problem then in all fairness I can understand them wanting to charge you for some of the time.

Apologies, another post I missed earlier.

Fair points.

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Keith,

Go and take your pathetic patronising, sarcastic comments and stick them somewhere warmer than my car :blink:

The thread is asking for opinions, unlike you I am more than mature enough to accept and digest other people's opinions that differ from my own without resorting to the classic forum abuse and backslapping displayed by yourself and the rather jeuvenile jonny.

If you really want to know, I'm 3 months younger than you, have bought and sold my house many years ago, currently going through a marriage break up and juggling several financial and personal family issues whilst trying to keep my head above water - don't make anyore patronising comments about me not understanding life just because you can't deal with someone who disagrees with you.

Thanks for your opinions, I wasn't looking for people who simply agree with me.

IT'S A DISCUSSION ABOUT A HEATER AND GARAGE SERVICE - KEEP YOUR TOTALLY GROUNDLESS PERSONAL INSULTS OUT OF THE DISCUSSION.

It's not about opinions, you are wrong, fact. They charged you for a service you asked for and they gave, get over it, you haven't been hard done to.

Everyone in buisiness charges for their time, it's the way the world runs and yes, it does make it truely unbelievable the fact that you are a similar age to me and are not aware of this.

And what's your personal life got to do with anything? We all have our problems, some more than most who think they are hard done to, but don't feel the need to use this to justify their means.

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It's not about opinions, you are wrong, fact. They charged you for a service you asked for and they gave, get over it, you haven't been hard done to.

Everyone in buisiness charges for their time, it's the way the world runs and yes, it does make it truely unbelievable the fact that you are a similar age to me and are not aware of this.

And what's your personal life got to do with anything? We all have our problems, some more than most who think they are hard done to, but don't feel the need to use this to justify their means.

Keith,

Take some time to make a proper analysis before rushing in with the vitriol, I know it's hard but just try.

I'll repeat what happened, maybe you'll get it this time (I'm moving house by the way so not having a car is a nightmare at the moment:)

Last week on Friday I booked in the car to be taken in on Tuesday, I took the car in on the Tues morning at 8am and phoned them at about 5pm to see if it was fixed. The answer was, "well he's had a look and can't find the problem but will have another look later..." "LAter? I need the car and expected it back today, said I" I said I will go and collect it. When I arrived they were very keen to get the car back the next day so I reluctantly agreed to drop it back in at around midday-ish which I did. Sometime around 4pm-5pm I got a phone call, "have you got good news for me John" I asked, "afraid not mate, I've replaced the thermostat and coolant like I said I would, but it's still the same".

So, yes, they have spent some time on the car, obviously I appreciate that which is why I agreed to pay what I did. Yes, they have put in a thermostat and some coolant, in my opinion anyone who thinks it's reasonable to pay for those when they didn't need replacing is plain stupid/naive/spineless, but that's just my opinion.

The bottom line is, if they had diagnosed correctly in the first place within an hour or two, and I had declined the offer of the work being done for £300, then I would accept that the professional skill and knowledge that they need to diagnose the fault has to be paid for.

But that is not the case: they have kept the car for a day and a half, replaced parts that didn't need replacing and it was only 20 minutes or so short of 15 hours did they tell me their 3rd diagnosis of the problem. By then it was too late to get the work done on Weds and basically too late to get it done now for a while. All in all, a pointless exercise.

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Keith,

Take some time to make a proper analysis before rushing in with the vitriol, I know it's hard but just try.

I'll repeat what happened, maybe you'll get it this time (I'm moving house by the way so not having a car is a nightmare at the moment:)

Last week on Friday I booked in the car to be taken in on Tuesday, I took the car in on the Tues morning at 8am and phoned them at about 5pm to see if it was fixed. The answer was, "well he's had a look and can't find the problem but will have another look later..." "LAter? I need the car and expected it back today, said I" I said I will go and collect it. When I arrived they were very keen to get the car back the next day so I reluctantly agreed to drop it back in at around midday-ish which I did. Sometime around 4pm-5pm I got a phone call, "have you got good news for me John" I asked, "afraid not mate, I've replaced the thermostat and coolant like I said I would, but it's still the same".

So, yes, they have spent some time on the car, obviously I appreciate that which is why I agreed to pay what I did. Yes, they have put in a thermostat and some coolant, in my opinion anyone who thinks it's reasonable to pay for those when they didn't need replacing is plain stupid/naive/spineless, but that's just my opinion.

The bottom line is, if they had diagnosed correctly in the first place within an hour or two, and I had declined the offer of the work being done for £300, then I would accept that the professional skill and knowledge that they need to diagnose the fault has to be paid for.

But that is not the case: they have kept the car for a day and a half, replaced parts that didn't need replacing and it was only 20 minutes or so short of 15 hours did they tell me their 3rd diagnosis of the problem. By then it was too late to get the work done on Weds and basically too late to get it done now for a while. All in all, a pointless exercise.

But how would you know the parts didn't need replacing at the time, without trying to see if it fixes the problem? If that mechanic chooses to operate in that way to diagnose a heater problem, that's his choice. If you didn't like that, you shouldn't have paid up.

It's easy to be aggrieved in retrospect, but that's the beauty of hindsight. Are you going to raise the issue with a small claims court, or do you concede to the fact that your payment and closure of the contract is legally binding?

Why can you not see that the mechanic was doing something logical? He's not psychic - he needs to establish what the cause is and the thermostat is cheaper to start with than the matrix itself. If he'd replaced the matrix for £300 and then said it was the thermostat all along, I bet you'd be kicking up even more of a stink.

FWIW, I care not about your personal circumstance; rather I sit here reading in utter disbelief at your consumer values and attitude.

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"afraid not mate, I've replaced the thermostat and coolant like I said I would, but it's still the same".

So he told you that he would replace the thermostat and coolant. (I will reiterate, this would be the first port of call on the symptons you had).

Did you question this at the time?

Did you say if that wasn't the cause of the problem you're not prepared to pay for it?

Personally, for the sake of a tenner, if someone was checking my thermostat, I would prefer them to replace it with a new one whether it was faulty or not.

So, yes, they have spent some time on the car, obviously I appreciate that which is why I agreed to pay what I did. Yes, they have put in a thermostat and some coolant, in my opinion anyone who thinks it's reasonable to pay for those when they didn't need replacing is plain stupid/naive/spineless, but that's just my opinion.

And I will say, how do you expect them to check the thermostat without losing coolant, therefore requiring the need to replenish said coolant?

Again, I will state anyone is foolish to go to the trouble of removing the thermostat and not replace it with a new due to the low cost of the component. But that is my opinion, not everyones.

The bottom line is, if they had diagnosed correctly in the first place within an hour or two, and I had declined the offer of the work being done for £300, then I would accept that the professional skill and knowledge that they need to diagnose the fault has to be paid for.

Every garage in the world would have done what they did first, so to expect a faulty matrix as the first diagnosis would have been foolish by them and could have been costly for you, if the thermostat or an air block was the problem.

But that is not the case: they have kept the car for a day and a half, replaced parts that didn't need replacing and it was only 20 minutes or so short of 15 hours did they tell me their 3rd diagnosis of the problem. By then it was too late to get the work done on Weds and basically too late to get it done now for a while. All in all, a pointless exercise.

Because they had the car for a day and a half does not mean that they spent a day and a half working on it. Due to the size of the bill you got I would imagine they have spent a maximum of 2 hrs on it. Garages don't just book one car in for a days work, they will have other jobs to do as well. Yes, they replaced the thermostat that may have been OK, but they would have lost coolant doing so and they would have had to check the coolant had no air in it,again another possible remedy for your symptons and again, something which would have used coolant. So you may have an argument about £10 or so for a thermostat, but certainly not for the coolant, that's if they have charged you for the coolant.

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jeuvenile jonny.

I give up, I really do.

But if I can just put aside the utter drivel that you come out with for one moment, I would like to (quite reasonably) ask you some questions. I dont think it's too jeuvenile to ask you answer them without resorting to twaddle

1. Money wise: do you want a refund?

2. If given the option, would you have your old thermostat and coolant put back?

3. Do you actually want the problem fixed still?

4. Are you prepared to pay to have the heater matrix replaced?

5. Are you willing to accept that what has happened, has happened, and you are unlikely to change the outcome?

6. If the answer to Q1 is yes what do you think the liklihood of this happening is?

7. I dont know or car what your job is, but if one of your customers wasn't satisfied, would offer to waive the bill, even if you thought that they were in the wrong and being quite unreasonable?

Thank you Ianash.

Jon

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Can I start one of these threads to get my post count up ???

Seriously, this thread is a waste of good storage space. Can the members here please, for the sake of the children, stop feeding the troll !!

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Can I start one of these threads to get my post count up ???

You can try queeg but it takes dedication to get your post count up! lol

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Can I start one of these threads to get my post count up ???

Seriously, this thread is a waste of good storage space. Can the members here please, for the sake of the children, stop feeding the troll !!

Don't ever confuse "post count" on a meaningless internet forum with a person's intellect or relevance in the real world. Good luck with the post count ;)

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Don't ever confuse "post count" on a meaningless internet forum with a person's intellect or relevance in the real world. Good luck with the post count ;)

So, I take it you agree with my points above as you haven't bothered to reply?

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So, I take it you agree with my points above as you haven't bothered to reply?

He/she has not answered my perfectly valid points either. I'd take it as an agreement :)

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