In article ,
Bill wrote:
In message ,
sm_jamieson writes
3. Backstreet garages who will do almost anything, but would you trust
them ? I would, if I was friends with someone there.

Depends on the car. For my Skoda, I'm happy with the main dealer who
always seems reliable and sensibly priced. Pleasant surroundings if
it's a while you wait job.

For the Rangie, either a recommended back street LR specialist, or my
normal back street garage. For the latter, unless it's something pretty
standard, I go online and try to find a descriptive post detailing how
to diy. My backstreet man has never been insulted by this and, on one
occasion, looked at it and came up with a better approach.

As I'm sure everyone knows, some main dealers have to be experienced to
be believed. Locally, Jeep stands out. "We threw out all the tools for
that model when we moved", " If it's 4 wheel drive, we can't do the
tracking", "You will have to wait until we can borrow the Jeep
diagnostics tool from Jeep HQ". I never actually got as far as putting
my vehicle in, but online Jeep forum posts indicated that not letting
them get their hands on mine was a very good move.

My favourite - not - was my local BMW main dealer. Now closed down.

Car went in for an oil service and to have a leak on the power steering
fixed. Which had left the front of the engine covered in fluid.

On picking it up, the car had been valeted as usual. So I looked under the
bonnet expecting to see a nice clean engine. Not so. Wondering if there
had been some mistake I checked the oil level too - car on level ground,
their car park. That was well below max without the engine having been
started by me - and was cold.

Went back to reception. Was told If I'd wanted the engine cleaned I should
have asked. (and paid for it) I didn't ask for the car to be valeted. And
that I didn't know how to check the oil level as it was measured out by a
computer for each model. So invited the service supervisor to show me
where I'd gone wrong. Even gave him a tissue to wipe the dipstick with.

I also asked him how you could check a leak had been fixed without
cleaning off the old fluid.

One thing was clear. A BMW customer at service time is always wrong. But
all most of them want is dolly birds in reception and free coffee.

As soon as it was out of warranty, I found a good independent.

--
*Indian Driver - Smoke signals only*

Dave Plowman London SW
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