Bill wrote:

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
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.

Oh, I forgot my favourite!

We had a Hillman Hunter - quite high profile with a mast etc. - and took
it to the main dealer for something or other. I took a colleague to
collect it and the receptionist asked us to wait on the forecourt while
he drove it round from the workshop.

He drove up, opened the bonnet and started to say they had replaced a
front shock absorber as well. As we chatted he leant on the front spring
turret and all three of us saw the nuts turning loosely under his hand.
No-one said a word, but he said something about Oh there's something I
wanted to check with the mechanics, and drove it round the back again.

Seeing we're doing main dealer stories, mine is a Ford main dealer who
replaced the clutch on my Mondeo. They forgot to put a bracket holding
the rigid power steering pipes in position at the back of the engine, so
one of the pipes rubbed on the sump and developed a pinhole leak which
revealed itself about a month later. I was pretty certain they'd deny
it and say the bracket fell of later (which it didn't, because the nut
it was supposed to be under was tightened up on another componet that
shared the same stud but I guess they would say I was mistaken.) Also
it was a biggish job to replace the pipe as it needed a subframe
removing for topological reasons so they would have charged me as much
labour as for the clutch if I had given it back to them. I don't think
I could have won the argument without paying an expert, and I really
needed the car for work. In the end I silver soldered the pinhole in
situ and somehow got the rear bracket in place and it ran for another
100,000 miles. But it was pretty crass incompetence for a main dealer.

--

Roger Hayter