We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Good Garage Scheme - Beware

Options
245

Comments

  • Horizon81
    Horizon81 Posts: 1,594 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    sassy-one wrote: »
    I have always taken my car (over the passed 5 years) to a Good garage scheme and to a Bosch approved one and foudn them to not only be great but very polite, friendly and good prices.

    I think every place has some bad days and I expect you are one of few who has received a bad experiance of such.

    If the garage was good it was because it was good anyway. What we've learned is that the good garage scheme is a front to sell Forte products which are entirely needless.

    I wonder how many of these garages would be as willing as the one mentioned by Lum (above) and not insist on using these engine treatments if asked.
  • pelican1
    pelican1 Posts: 8 Forumite
    edited 19 September 2012 at 11:47PM
    To join the good garage scheme you need to pay your £25 a month and buy the forte product which you then sell to your customers.

    You will get kicked off the scheme if you don't sell enough product!

    If you look at the feedbacks for garages they are all 90% or more that's because you can't leave bad feed back, well you can but it will not appear.

    The garages could well be good and the trustworthy ones will not be sticking in additives that your manufacturer does not recommend and in most cases would advise you do not need!

    I know this is an old thread but with the recent advertising campaign it's important that you know all is not what it seems.

    If you are using a garage that's in the GGS and they give you a good service and don't rip you off for forte products, stick with them they will be one of the good guys.
  • Horizon81 wrote: »
    The Good Garage Scheme - sounds like an independent scheme, possibly a quango

    ..

    I decided to look closer at their website and sure enough, the Good Garage Scheme is run by Forte - a lubricants company!

    ..

    The suspicious would say that as the 'scheme' is run by a lubricants company that there is perhaps a vested interest in forcing these products/treatments on you without even consulting you?!

    What did you really expect though? - Everyone in the UK is trying to stitch up and con someone else out of money somehow and making it look legitimate. It's having the instinct and the skills to see it coming before you're hit by it that many people seem to have lost these days. If it looks semi official and has a nice big round spikey 'SUPER DUPER OFFER' type thing on it people will flock to it and spend money.

    Advertise a genuine service at a genuine price and people don't want to know - they'll go off looking for that bargain with the super duper offer to convince themselves that it was money well spent - even if it actually costs them more for less. Because it was part of a so called offer (even if the offer was worthless) they'll still give themselves a pat on the back for finding it instead of using the genuine place with a genuine price.

    I can't help but wonder how many genuinely priced garages you overlooked while using your good garage scheme 'approved' garage :D

    Bottom line is that in this country, real honest customer service doesn't exist. It's a rat race, everyone wants your money and they're coming up with ever more sneaky ways of parting you from it.

    Many would say I'm a glass half empty type of person. Quite the opposite, I just see things for what they are and see how people are trying to screw me / others to suit themselves. 3 years before Woolworths collapsed I had an arguement with them about something and told their staff if they didn't change they'd go bust. I got a blank looking face back as if to say "We're woollies, we're untouchable you moron". 3 years later they went down the pan.

    Thats the UK for you.. everyone is trying to diddle someone.
  • I foolishly used the GGS site to find a local garage for a repair (New water pump and repair of other water leaks). The repair turned out to be expensive and in the process they managed to make my heater cease to work. They were not interested in repairing that FOC although it was fine when the car went in.
    I tried to leave a review on the GGS site but found that anything other than a positive review does not get placed on their site. When I contacted them through their Facebook page, they told me they don't post 'inappropriate' reviews. My review was both fair and extremely civil. The garage had made a decent job of the main repair, but refused to take responsibility for the damaged heater, I thought it only right to relay that back to the Scheme.
    The response from GGS prompted me to look a bit deeper at the reviews on their site. I sat for over an hour looking at each review in turn for the list of garages in my area and there was not one single negative review to be found, so I am either blessed with living in an area full of perfect garages, or the review system is extremely biased in the extreme.

    My advice based on experience, is take absolutely zero notice of the reviews on the GGS site, they are utterly worthless.
  • I would also advice anyone to disregard the good garage scheme…

    In may this year I had my mot done at a garage I had used before and who was a member of the good garage scheme. After going over what needed doing to the car I left the garage after being advised that the repair costs would not exceed £350. I collected the car three days later and was given a bill for £315, I drove the car away and all was ok. Shortly afterwards the exhaust stating rattling quite loudly and then scrapped when I drove over a speed bump. I returned the car to the garage and when it was lifted on the ramp myself and the garage owner noticed that the exhaust backbox that had been replaced had been help in place by a plastic cable tie?!?!? I complained about this and asked the garage to rectify the problem and left the car with them. When I collected it they advised they had secured the exhaust and then tried charging me £10 for my troubles without even producing an invoice. I left the garage without paying as the work should have been covered under the guarantee. A short while afterwards the problems began again and after having a good look at it myself I found that the exhaust mounting rubbers were all worn. I returned to the garage and they advised they were busy that day and asked if I could return the following day, when I went back the day after they refused to look at the car and after the conversation became heated their mechanic attempted to assault me! I contacted the good garage scheme and the fun began… they suspended the garage from their scheme and agreed to mediate, I advised that I had been quoted £88 to repair the exhaust properly and after a few days the ggs phoned to say that the garage had agreed to this but they wanted the old exhaust back. The cheque from the garage finally arrived 5 days after by which time I’d had to park the car up for 4 days as the exhaust was now dragging on the floor. I then went through a right carry on getting it repaired and decided that I shouldn’t be out of pocket as the garage should have performed the work correctly in the first place. I’ve started court proceeding against the garage and the ggs have jumped in and said that they are going to assist the garage by producing evidence that shows I accepted full and final settlement of the complaint. I politely pointed out to the ggs that not only had the garage not followed the code of conduct all members are supposed to adhere to, they also performed substandard repairs to the car and refused to rectify the problem when presented with it and that I verbally advised I would accept the £88 as long as no further costs were incurred. The ggs has also not published the feedback I left on the garage despite my keeping it very fair and simply advising that I would not use the garage again…
  • I recently took my car for an MOT and it failed due to needing some welding on the sill's. The MOT station quoted me a price for the work but to be sure I was getting a good price, I got a quote from another garage(a GGS one). This turned out to be cheaper so booked it in.

    The short version is that the GGS garage chose to use filler instead of cutting out the rot and welding in new metal and the MOT station spotted it. There was a bit of arguing between the two garages resulting in the MOT station threatening to report the GGS garage to VOSA. The GGS garage then said they would re-do the repair and MOT the car for free.
    An hour later the car had a new MOT! I'm pretty sure all they did was sand down some of the filler and spray more underseal over it. They must have sanded down the filler with the car window down as the interior was covered in filler(and stunk of it) plus they had oversprayed the whole car with underseal(took me 2 hours to remove with tar remover)

    Anyway I put a review on the GGS for the garage and it never appeared(no real surprise).

    I have since sold the car and also found out that I must be about the only person locally that didnt know about the garage's reputation.

    You live and learn!
  • dispossessed
    dispossessed Posts: 318 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 4 August 2014 at 4:10PM
    The "Good Garage Scheme" isn't always !

    When I first discovered the scheme I contacted Forte and asked what safeguards were there to stop a garage owner from completing their own feedback cards etc. (eg. Job / Invoice numbers etc). Anything that could be independently verified if required. I received an e-mail reply that, ultimately, did not address or answer my question whatsoever.

    As the Garagre Trade where we live is to mechanical excellence what Genghis Khan was to Diplomatic Relations we decided to look further afield for our servicing needs. Ultimately we found a garage a few miles away who, as it happened, was a member of said "Good Garage" scheme.

    We took our 3 year old car there for its first MOT prior to which I had given the car a fairly thorough examination underneath, in particular, the braking system (on the basis one of the most common causes of failure).

    Pleasingly the car passed its MOT.

    However as I drove home, less than a couple of miles from the garage, the ABS light came on.

    Upon getting home I removed the front wheels for a quick look. I was horrified to discover that both ABS reluctor wheels were broken (they certainly weren't the day before !) and an absolute bucket load of copper grease spread liberally over the hubs et al (but not the rotors).

    How, why, and motivated by what I do not know but that vehicle had two intact ABS reluctors when it went in and two broken ones within a couple of miles of leaving.

    Go figure.

    I am sure that there are honest mechanics and garages out there somewhere. However, in 35 years of motoring I have still to discover one.

    One, perhaps interesting footnote : when I was a Law student, there was frequently a fairly large stash of Law textbooks in my car. Curiously, after dropping off the car at various garages, on several occasions, I received 'phone calls soon after along the lines of "my mechanic had to rush home and we cannot attend to your car" etc.

    Coincidence ?
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 7,175 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Is it just my local Bosch approved garage, or are all of them out to over charge and rip you off?

    I've been to my local one twice for quotes and have been 40-50% more than what all the other local garages quoted.
  • colino
    colino Posts: 5,059 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    The same coincidence as fitter rifling through your reading materials as someone with half a clue of mechanics in this country calling discs rotors.
  • colino wrote: »
    The same coincidence as fitter rifling through your reading materials as someone with half a clue of mechanics in this country calling discs rotors.

    Given your love of linguistic pedantry you're not a dodgy mechanic by any chance ?
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 350.8K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.5K Spending & Discounts
  • 243.8K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 598.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 176.8K Life & Family
  • 257.1K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.