Was told car has new engine but it hasn't

teekay_tk

Dear All,
I am going to try and summarize the problem here, hope someone can help. A week or so ago my car stopped working and AA declared it as engine seized. I got it to a independent small (back street) garage, who said that engine was seized and there were no codes in computer and that it would cost me £2300 to get it fixed. I told them I did not have such money in the bank, but I could pay it on my credit card. They took me to a neighbouring shop, where they asked me to pay £2300 in advance. Seems they are friends with the shop so would have some sort of agreement with them. I paid the amount and came back in a weeks time (yesterday) to get the car back. I was told to bring back the car in one weeks time when I will be given all the receipts and they'll do another check on the car to make sure all is fine. Today I had a look at the engine number, and its the same number as on my V5C. Also plugged the car into computer and got codes out of it that show there was some CRANK SENSOR fault and IMMOBILIZER fault on the car. May be that is why it wasn't starting.
As this is a back street garage, from which I have had no receipts and also I have paid into a neighbouring shop, I have a feeling I will not get my money back if I confront them with this that they have not changed the engine as they claim.
Can I go to my card company and ask them for this money back for services not delivered?

jamesml

I can't see the credit card company paying out if you haven't discussed it with the company first.

Have they given you a working car back?

Without wanting to sound rude, I hope you have realised by now that this whole thing sounds completely dodgy. They may have been able to repair it but ripped you off on the price, in which case you could probably fight it. How it works if you have paid a different company I don't know, although arguably you've paid a company who have done no work for you, so perhaps you have some recourse there.

Good luck and fight tooth and nail to get to a reasonable position (reasonable, if they have done work for you that doesn't mean you will necessarily get all your money back) but remember to chalk whatever is left over to exeperience and not be quite so naive in future maybe.

Hominu

I don't really understand your post.

You gave a garage a non-working car and asked them to fix it.
They gave you a quote.
You accepted the quote.
They charged your card with the exact value of the quote.
You receive a working car in return.
The car has since shown fault codes (which may or may not be relevant)

When did they say they were going to replace the engine? Do you have this in writing?

Your V5C shows the Vehicle Identification Number. It does not show the engine serial number.

Therefore, how can you prove "services not delivered" ?

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

teekay_tk wrote: »

Dear All,
I am going to try and summarize the problem here, hope someone can help. A week or so ago my car stopped working and AA declared it as engine seized. I got it to a independent small (back street) garage, who said that engine was seized and there were no codes in computer and that it would cost me £2300 to get it fixed. I told them I did not have such money in the bank, but I could pay it on my credit card. They took me to a neighbouring shop, where they asked me to pay £2300 in advance. Seems they are friends with the shop so would have some sort of agreement with them. I paid the amount and came back in a weeks time (yesterday) to get the car back. I was told to bring back the car in one weeks time when I will be given all the receipts and they'll do another check on the car to make sure all is fine. Today I had a look at the engine number, and its the same number as on my V5C. Also plugged the car into computer and got codes out of it that show there was some CRANK SENSOR fault and IMMOBILIZER fault on the car. May be that is why it wasn't starting.
As this is a back street garage, from which I have had no receipts and also I have paid into a neighbouring shop, I have a feeling I will not get my money back if I confront them with this that they have not changed the engine as they claim.
Can I go to my card company and ask them for this money back for services not delivered?

Welcome to MSE :wave:
Long story. Can you expand on just what services were not delivered?

Edit: Have just re-read the title of the thread. D'oh. It's not mentioned in the body. Sorry.

forgotmyname

A faulty crank sensor wont stop the engine turning over. So was the engine turning over before you took it in?
If it cranked over with a decent battery or jump leads then the engine was not seized in the first place.

Did you tell them what the problem was or ask them to investigate the problem?
If you took it in and said the engine has seized then you cannot blame them for not diagnosing it incorrectly.

When fitting an engine or even rebuilding the current one i would crank the engine over to build oil pressure before attempting to start it.
This would entail disconnecting crank/cams sensors or fuel feed/sensors.
Not unknown to get fault codes after doing that.

teekay_tk

Dear All
As this was my first post I did not want to bore anyone with a really long story. Also sorry for the misinformation, the engine number was on HPI (cardatacheck) report, not on V5C.

the engine seize was diagnosed by AA ( on the road side, in 2 mins) and later by that garage. They told me they were unable to crank it at all and I definitely needed a replacement engine that they had sourced from a local salvage yard. then they charged me the money though their neighbours and told me they sent the car of to an engine specialist who would replace the engine. I kept in touch with them every day during this process. Then they called me to tell me the engine had been exchanged and they car was ready. I asked them to tell me the engine details of the engine like how many miles it had done and they said they didn't know such information as its not provided with salvaged engines.

So basically I am angry that I have been lied to as the engine number that is stamped into the lower block of the engine (10 digit code) is the same as the one on the car data check. I do not have V5C yet as I just bought the car 5 weeks ago and still waiting for it to arrive from DVLA.
If the engine has not been changed then they have repaired it, possibly at a lot less cost than complete engine replacement. But I guess I will never know. There may be possiblity that they just changed a couple of sensors , or may be it was problem with immobilizer that was stopping the car from cranking.

gardner1

teekay_tk wrote: »

Dear All,
I am going to try and summarize the problem here, hope someone can help. A week or so ago my car stopped working and AA declared it as engine seized. I got it to a independent small (back street) garage, who said that engine was seized and there were no codes in computer and that it would cost me £2300 to get it fixed. I told them I did not have such money in the bank, but I could pay it on my credit card. They took me to a neighbouring shop, where they asked me to pay £2300 in advance. Seems they are friends with the shop so would have some sort of agreement with them. I paid the amount and came back in a weeks time (yesterday) to get the car back. I was told to bring back the car in one weeks time when I will be given all the receipts and they'll do another check on the car to make sure all is fine. Today I had a look at the engine number, and its the same number as on my V5C. Also plugged the car into computer and got codes out of it that show there was some CRANK SENSOR fault and IMMOBILIZER fault on the car. May be that is why it wasn't starting.
As this is a back street garage, from which I have had no receipts and also I have paid into a neighbouring shop, I have a feeling I will not get my money back if I confront them with this that they have not changed the engine as they claim.
Can I go to my card company and ask them for this money back for services not delivered?

first mistake was paying in advance:eek:

Gromitt

teekay_tk wrote: »

If the engine has not been changed then they have repaired it, possibly at a lot less cost than complete engine replacement. But I guess I will never know. There may be possiblity that they just changed a couple of sensors , or may be it was problem with immobilizer that was stopping the car from cranking.

An immobilizer fault will generally not prevent the car from cranking. More likely it will crank and then cut-out when the security fails. Likewise, a faulty sensor will not give the impression that the engine has seized.

It sounds like the engine was not replaced, but it may have been rebuilt or re-manufactured. Considering you only waited a week, the later is unlikely.

If you don't have a quote which states the engine will be replaced, then you don't have much to go on as they did fix the fault which you told them about.

You may have got it done significantly cheaper elsewhere, but you can't really complain about that now.

poppasmurf_bewdley

What sort and age of car are we talking about. £2.5k for fitting an engine from a salvage yard is one hell of a lot unless we are talking a very high end car.

And did you really pay £2.5k in advance to a back street garage you have never dealt with before?

If you've only had the car for five weeks, was it not still under some sort of warranty, or did you buy it privately.

ruds46

Hominu wrote: »

I don't really understand your post.

You gave a garage a non-working car and asked them to fix it.
They gave you a quote.
You accepted the quote.
They charged your card with the exact value of the quote.
You receive a working car in return.
The car has since shown fault codes (which may or may not be relevant)

When did they say they were going to replace the engine? Do you have this in writing?

Your V5C shows the Vehicle Identification Number. It does not show the engine serial number.

Therefore, how can you prove "services not delivered" ?

The V5 has the engine number on it, and forms part of the Chassis Number

thenudeone

The short answer is that if you have a valid legal case against the garage, then it can be enforced directly against the credit card company.

The standard of proof and the legal remedies are exactly the same, regardless of who you decide to sue.

Since it appears that you have got what you expected, i.e. a fixed car, it depends on what evidence you have that the quote/price was meant to include a replacement engine. A verbal assurance is evidence, just not very good evidence, since its very difficult to prove one way or another.

You could try to to claim against the CC company but I would expect a strong defence from them. You may have to put this one down to experience.