Help require please xx

bensonsmum

If any of you savvy car people can help me i would be extremely grateful.

Last week my clutch started to play up so took it to a local mechanic and he said i needed a new clutch, i also asked him to fit new pads and discs as i had been told recently when i had an mot done that they would both need replacing pretty soon.

I paid the price he asked me - he did the job so i took the car home, the following day my neighbour said i had a lot of oil on the road where i had been parked, so i rang the mechanic and he said it was probably the drive shaft seal which had got damaged when the clutch was replaced. He couldn't do the job so told me to ring him back in half an hour as he was going to a funeral. I rang him back and he said he had got someone to do the job if i took it straight to the other garage within half an hour, which i did they replaced the seal and i drove off home - all well and good. I have just received a message saying that i need to pay the other garage for fitting the drive shaft seal!!!
Surely if the job had been done properly in the first place this shouldn't have happened??? i need to know where i stand please, should i now be paying for the seal to be fitted?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and any help would be great. xx

Notmyrealname

You need to be paying the garage who fitted the seal. You then get the cost back from him.

Mistake was not establishing who was paying for what first. Cost of fitting a seal shouldn't be that much. Its not even 30 minutes on most cars.

bensonsmum

Notmyrealname wrote: »

You need to be paying the garage who fitted the seal. You then get the cost back from him.

Mistake was not establishing who was paying for what first. Cost of fitting a seal shouldn't be that much. Its not even 30 minutes on most cars.

My usual mechanic wants me to pay him and he will pay the garage that did the job, but surely if he had done the job properly in the first place it shouldn't have needed to be replaced??

societys_child

bensonsmum wrote: »

My usual mechanic wants me to pay him and he will pay the garage that did the job, but surely if he had done the job properly in the first place it shouldn't have needed to be replaced??

He probably did the job properly but the oil seal has failed (maybe because it's been disturbed and was on it's way out).
I'm sure if he'd known the seal was going to fail he would have replaced it (and charged for it at the time)

marlot

I think this is one of those things which its fair to pay. Your mech wouldn't have been negligent - they do sometimes leak when they've been distrurbed.

s_b

i think original mechanic should have sorted this and at worst split the cost of parts and labour
yes they can go if disturbed
yes they can go if you rip it when replacing the driveshaft in the box
we dont know the car as usual so its difficult to get a full picture
personally i would pay up and move on and not use original place again or recommend them

Joe_Horner

Sounds like a textbook scenario where a Good Guy would be explaining how it can happen (because it CAN happen whenever you disturb a seal) then saying "if you buy the part, I'll fit it for free". Sure, you lose maybe an hour of your time, but you gain lots of customer respect in return!