garage did more work than requested - what are my options?

drsquirrel

If you ask for a service, they will do such, if you ever look at the servicing lists they use (manufacterer, autodata that kind of stuff), it will show a list of items, and there are a lot of check/replace type things. Thus they might replace some items, and just check other items.

If they change these, is down to opinion, which is hard to prove. If the individual item is young, then consider the warranty for that part.


I have a close relationship with my mechanic, and he gets annoyed that people come to him saying they want this and that done, and he does it and points out other stuff is needed, and they get annoyed at him...
Also there are people out there that assume a car service is just change of oil + fuel filter... he actually turns away people that just ask for oil and filter services sadly (and he is busy enough to do so).


Doing (the additional) work without consulting you isn't allowed afaik, but I will let other people quote on this.

instaunt

You shouldn't have paid for the extra work. At the very least if you had refused to pay for and remained adamant that you had not requested the work then they would have knocked the price of the extra work right down.

This happened to me once and after refusing to pay for the extra work long enough the garage simply said "fine, it's a freebie". Guess what? They have now been my garage for 10+ years. If your garage has any sense they'll do the same or similar.