Have you been ripped off by a garage and caught them out?

adamc260

It's shocking to think garages do this.. Luckily my dad has been a mechanic/engineer his entire life and knows all the local garages so I don't get ripped off as he will ask me what was done when I get home and if anything is incorrect he's on the phone straight away!

God help me when he's not there! I'd get conned left right and centre lol

TrickyWicky

As much as I hate working on cars because they're horrible messy, greasy, slimey frustrating, time consuming lumps of rust, I try to do as much of my own repair work as possible now because I've had such bad experiences with the local mechs.

The worst thing is they always seem to go wrong in the colder months making it even more of a misery. There really is nothing worse than being out there in the freezing cold handling lumps of ice cold metal and tools. I rebuilt one once in the middle of February during the snow, rain and howling winds. Horrible but I did it as a labour of love at the time but once you've done it once you realise you don't want to do it again.

macman

I now get my MOT's done at the local council vehicle depot (thank you for the tip Martin). Normally carried out in 30 minutes on a Saturday morning and of course (since they don't do repairs) they have absolutely no incentive to find non-existent or borderline faults to fail you on.

TrickyWicky

I avoid the council depots.. even they can try to rip you off. We used one years ago and they failed the car on emissions. Then they wanted to charge for a retest.

Came back and I remembered there was an MOT place near an old mates garage. We went there, little independent MOT station that only does MOTs. Fantastic service, the bloke tested the emissions quickly and found nothing wrong. Went to reception begged to be fitted in and they did it. Car passed with a clean bill of health.

I had a massive row with VOSA on the phone that day..

property.advert

Sent my motor to Vauxhall for the big service and I was happy with the discounted price I negotiated so no worries there. However, as the MOT was included, I was shocked to see it had failed and then passed on the second go.

Apparently the failure was for the sat nav suction cup on the windscreen, which the tester removed the second time around to allow it to pass !

Flyboy152

TrickyWicky wrote: »

I avoid the council depots.. even they can try to rip you off. We used one years ago and they failed the car on emissions. Then they wanted to charge for a retest.

Came back and I remembered there was an MOT place near an old mates garage. We went there, little independent MOT station that only does MOTs. Fantastic service, the bloke tested the emissions quickly and found nothing wrong. Went to reception begged to be fitted in and they did it. Car passed with a clean bill of health.

I had a massive row with VOSA on the phone that day..

What was the passed reading and what was the failed reading?

Flyboy152

property.advert wrote: »

Sent my motor to Vauxhall for the big service and I was happy with the discounted price I negotiated so no worries there. However, as the MOT was included, I was shocked to see it had failed and then passed on the second go.

Apparently the failure was for the sat nav suction cup on the windscreen, which the tester removed the second time around to allow it to pass !

Let that be a lesson to everyone else, to remove such things from their windscreens.

Also, a point to note, there is a reason why such a thing is an MOT failure and all drivers should take note of the dangers they put themselves and others in, when they attach them to the middle of their windscreens.

smartskyline

I took my car to a garage to replace a thermostat as the car was running cold, they told me they would look into it, went back in the evening to be told the thermostat was fine, but the water pump was not working as it should, and would cost £300 to fix!!!!!!!

I said that if the water pump was broke, and no water was rushing around the engine as expected, surely the engine would get hotter and hotter until the car boiled dry!

He carried on for a couple of minutes trying to justify his diagnosis, after laughing at him for several minutes, I asked for my keys back, changed the thermostat myself, and all was well with the world.

The stupid thing was, I used them several times before and they were very good, what has actually happened now is I have rubbished their name to everyone I know, and no-one uses them now...

adamc260

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Let that be a lesson to everyone else, to remove such things from their windscreens.

Also, a point to note, there is a reason why such a thing is an MOT failure and all drivers should take note of the dangers they put themselves and others in, when they attach them to the middle of their windscreens.

Where is the best place to mount it? I put mine on the bottom right of the screen.

Mrs_Imp

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Also, a point to note, there is a reason why such a thing is an MOT failure and all drivers should take note of the dangers they put themselves and others in, when they attach them to the middle of their windscreens.

That reminded me of my last MOT. The tester passed it, but was very confused. There were rear seatbelts, but no rear seat. The seatbelts worked fine, so he was able to pass it. When I picked it up he asked about it. It was because I'd had some welding done and taken the rear seats out, but as they'd not had the seats to measure against, the holes were now in the wrong place for them.