Car rip off question

Andrea

Yay. I'm one of the members randomly selected to take part in the Which? Car poll for next year. ;D

My other half had great fun filling the questionnaire in last night. He certainly didn't hold back on his opinions of his VW Golf. The responses looked horrendous compared to mine. ::)

Fran

It sounds like you were also ripped off at the first garage as low oil light was indicating low oil and you could have put that in yourself! I would also write to them for your money back. I haven't read the websites but as I remember it you could take it to another garage to fix and send the bill to the VW garage. Get someone else on your side if they don't cough up (which it appears they're not going to), eg: local Trading Standards and Citizens Advice Bureau. Meanwhile I hope you have written to them - recorded delivery which is not that expensive - to cover yourself and give them a chance to pay. Both garages should pay you back in full, accept nothing less - what "goodwill" have they shown?! Garages are notorious for ripping us off - I've had loads of problems with stacks of different garages over the years and still haven't got a regular garage that I trust. Good luck!

markedgar

I agree with what's been said here.

I personally wouldn't pay another bean to the garage and I would ask for my money back as the problem has not been rectified.

Little tip: DO pay by credit card. A while back my wife and I had a huge bill for our short-lived PUG 205 (Peugeot) as a result of it needing a new front driveshaft because the rubber gator had perished.

Yeah, right. Bill came to just under £600!

Warranty company didn't want to know. Garage was sympathetic, but didn't help much, so I said ok, 'I'm paying under protest'. I informed the credit card provider and wrote to the warranty provider (who didn't want to know, surprise surprise).

When the statement arrived, I reiterated my right to refuse to pay it with the credit card company and eventually managed to reduce the bill to under half what was owed.

While this wasn't a 100% victory, it did indeed help, and like most people with a car, we needed the darn thing to travel over 30 miles to work every day!

What exactly is their problem?

Mark E

PS: Lewis. What's an Austin Ambassador? I thought you were a 'youngster' like me? :P

leosayer39

Hi all,

Mark E

What was the name of the warranty provider. (pm me with it if you don't want to post it)

I ask the question because I'm thinking of buying one for our new(ish)car

[move]Leo [/move]

markedgar

Uhm, a while ago. I will need to search my archives to find out.

I know they were based in London and were extremely unhelpful.

I was not surprised, though.

Will let you know when I find out leo.

Mark E

PS: Our next car (which we still have) was purchased through a small dealer and the credit provider then was 'Credit Lyonnais' who were excellent. I even received a nice premium refund/rebate cheque on my birthday when the car had been paid off!

Lewis_Gerolemou

I have just had my car serviced by the main dealer that sold it to me. I asked them to MOT it as it is now 3 years old. When I checked the car in they said they could not do the MOT because I had not booked it (I had). I picked up the car and paid £334 and then spent the afternoon driving around town trying to get an MOT. After about 6 stops I found one that could do it in about an hours time so I waited. I got chatting to the boss and he told me he could have done the job for £78 plus parts plus VAT and that he had all the electronic gizmos for checking the car out. He said that it should not affect my 6 year rust warrantee. They seemed very competent at the garage, all the customers I saw left with smiles on their faces and none of the mechanics had acne. Apparently I was charged £85 per hour at the main dealer, the second garage charges £40 per hour. The moral is if it doesn't invalidate your warranty keep away from main dealers.
Lewis Gerolemou

bbruce

A friend was persuaded by the offer of a free wash & valet to get his BMW serviced at a different garage from his regular one.
Imagine his surprise when he went to collect it that his anti-perforation warranty was had been invalidated because the car was too dirty to inspect!
The car was clean and shiny - you guessed it - they inspected it before they cleaned it!

rygon

a survey i saw in the papers showed that indipendent gagrages where more likely to find car faults than the big garages. my dad has a rover and he took that in for servicing not long ago. when he got it back it was very slow and lumpy. turns out it was running on 3 cylinders. Took iot back and demanded to know how such a blatent problem could be caused and missed. they said it was down to their computer. asked if they had taken it for a test drive..of course not (doubt they even started the engine) but todays so called "engineers" are just people who read what the fault is and change it. no thinking goes into it. I take my car into a local garage and although he doesnt have all the technical equipment he always does a great job at half the price.
btw my dads friend had his car serviced at the dealers and evry single time got charged for spark plugs ...he had a diesel engine