Anyone else had problems with Kwik Fit's Air Conditioning recharge?

Evilm

We recently took both of our two cars into Kwik Fit to get the air conditioning recharged and on both occasions they said they couldn't do it. Once because the Compressor seemed broken (on a 3yr old car) and second because of a leak.

The strange thing is that both cars seemed to be working ok before we took them in but just not very cold and after seemed much much worse and barely working at all.

Car 2 is going in for service next week and we will ask them what it looks like but Car 1 we had Kwik Fits "mobile specialist" come and look at it and they declared it to be the Compressor and quoted us £1000 to fix it. Another garage quoted us a price over the phone of £450 approx for the same fix (based on what we had been told was wrong).

Since Car 1 is just within warranty we have had it in with the main dealer to check and notify the warranty company so that it is covered.

The dealer has come back to us and told us that the Compressor would have been under the warranty however the problem is actually a broken wire that supplies power to the Compressor so that is not covered. Thankfully the bill will be very low.

It seems weird to me that Kwik Fits experts did not notice this and tried to charge us nearly £1000 for a new part we did not need! :eek:

i guess my question is:

1. Should we be worried that our local Kwik Fit's and their experts are not up to scratch to even deal with Air Conditioning queries?

2. Has anyone else suspected that their cars have left Kwik Fit more damaged than when they went in? We may just have been unlucky but I do wonder if its more than that.

Luckily we were able to get verification from a third party but I can't imagine what would have happened if we hadn't considered making a warranty claim!

jd82

How many times does it need to be said? Avoid those fast fit places like the plague. They employ oinks and many of them would never make it as a real machanic. I had to tone down my reply a bit

Report them to trading standards and just avoid them in the future.

KillerWatt

If you had 2 choices consisting of Kwik-!!!!!! or a semi-trained lab monkey armed with a £50 chinese toolkit, the latter wins hands down every time.

rev_henry

jd82 wrote: »

How many times does it need to be said? Avoid those fast fit places like the plague. They employ oinks and many of them would never make it as a real machanic. I had to tone down my reply a bit

Report them to trading standards and just avoid them in the future.

I'd disagree about ALL fast fit places. Instead I would suggest MOST kwik fits and MANY branches of other similar outfits. We for example have a National tyres in 2 nearby towns. One is excellent, the other once tried to sell me 4 overpriced tyres when I only needed 2. Similarly where we used to live my father (I was too young to drive at the time!) ALWAYS took our cars to the local kwik fit as they were superb, once doing something for free ('just put a fiver in the charity box love!'), but now our local one is just unhelpful.

bob_a_builder

local Kwik Fit's and their experts

Contradiction in terms, those words should never appear in the same sentence

Evilm

I agree with you all in that you should normally avoid them like the plague and I do blame myself for not doing so this time. We used them this time
1) because we'd heard no bad stories about their air conditioning services nationwide and 2) because the people who have used our local one said they'd never had a problem with them.

Obviously we won't be doing so again and will be ensuring anyone else we know wont either!

rev_henry

Evilm wrote: »

I agree with you all in that you should normally avoid them like the plague and I do blame myself for not doing so this time. We used them this time
1) because we'd heard no bad stories about their air conditioning services nationwide and 2) because the people who have used our local one said they'd never had a problem with them.

Obviously we won't be doing so again and will be ensuring anyone else we know wont either!

There is a forum member somewhere on here who is a professional aircon technician. Have a search and you'll probably find him...

harveybobbles

KwitFit type places are only any good at fitting tyres and nothing else. They are not mechanics by any means! Why people use them is beond me...

Gloomendoom

Evilm wrote: »

Kwik Fits experts

Isn't that an oxymoron?

vikingaero

I took my mums car to Kwik Fit for an air-con recharge. They found a hole in the condenser and didn't charge for it.

If the OP's car had a faulty compressor and a leak in the other car then I fail to see how KF could be to blame. They are hardly likely to do a detailed investigation into a broken wire for a £50 a/c service and if there is a leak on the other car then they can't regas it. I think you need to realise that it really is a splash and go £50 gas top up and not a full VIP service.

mikey72

There would have been no charge at kwik fit, not many places give that. Other garages would ave charged for the time spent trying to fill.