What to do when car repairs cost more than expected?

gayleygoo

OH bought a new (to us, it's an '08 car), and after a few little niggles in the first month of driving, he left it in to a mechanic to see if there was anything wrong. Turns out there was something wrong with the head gasket. A few quotes from other mechanics quoted the work at £400 - a lot of money having just bought a new car, but didn't want to take the risk of further damage to the car.

The garage it went to for repair (not the original mechanic, he didn't do head gasket repair apparently), has had the car for over a month. OH called in with them several times in the first few weeks, but no one gave him an estimate for the work when he asked. Yesterday he was told the work stands at £1200 so far (not finished), plus VAT. :eek:

I am horrified. We don't have anywhere near that amount of money. We got a loan to buy the car, and an extra few hundred towards repairs, we have no further savings. The car should be ready next week, but how can we pay? Will they accept a credit card? Had they ever mentioned it would be that much, we wouldn't have got the work done with them. If they'd said halfway through the job that the costs were mounting up, we could have tried to save a bit more.

Not sure what I'm really asking here, just needed to rant maybe. Has anyone else been in this situation? What did you do?

AdrianC

One thing to remember - it's not a new car - it's a seven year old car...

OK, with that in mind, £400 for a HG sounds VERY cheap. Unrealistically so. What car is it? What's the hourly labour rate at the garage?

What's the parts bill element of that? Changing a head gasket is rarely as straightforward as just swapping the gasket. The head may have warped, requiring machining, or cracked, requiring replacement. Oil and water may have contaminated each other, requiring cleaning of the cooling system and lubrication system. Since the cambelt has to come off anyway, it'd be foolish not to replace the belt, tensioners, waterpump at the same time. Whilst hoses are off, it'd be foolish not to replace them if they are showing signs of ageing. Have any fasteners seized, requiring machine work or other parts to be replaced?

And, importantly, why did the HG go in the first place? They don't just let go. Something causes them to fail, often overheating due to lack of coolant. Did the radiator corrode or get stone-damaged?

Much of that is not going to be evident until strip-down starts. But they should have explained all that at the time.

Equally, a month and not yet finished...? With no communication at all? No. Not acceptable, on so many levels. I'd expect a day or two's work, plus any parts delays.

But, at the end of the day, you've got a stark choice. Get your car fixed or scrap it.

colino

What kind of car is it, what is the actual fault and what kind of garage keeps a car such a long time to do a simple job? Sounds like a dodgy, "engine reconditioner" that the equally dodgy Dom Littlewood would like to do battle with on behalf of a conshuuuumer.

gayleygoo

Thank you AdrianC. I realise it's nowhere near "new", but it felt very new compared to our 12 year old previous car :rotfl:

My Dad is a car body repair mechanic, so he did go over some details that you mentioned, but he thought it wouldn't cost more than £400 too. I'm guessing it was a bigger job that originally thought, but it would have been nice to be kept updated.

It's a toyota avensis, and the fault is very common with what seems to be a particular batch of them. So much so, that toyota offered free replacement engines in them for 7 years. We bought the car about 2 months after this warranty expired, so they couldn't help.

The garage said they wouldn't be replacing any parts, just fixing what was already there. Maybe they did then replace parts, but never mentioned this. Perhaps the problem is that we didn't research much ourselves - my dad recommended that garage as it's the one he uses, and he left it in, so we never asked what the labour charge was.

A day or two?? It was left in at the end of May. OH has had to pester them with phonecalls and visits to find out any info, but they could never give an idea of the cost or a timeframe, nor could they say what had been done to the car. Scrapping the car isn't really an option, so we'll just have to pay it somehow. If we'd known how much it would be, we could have been more prepared, OH could have done some overtime, I could have sold some things. Now we probably won't be able to pick it up when it's ready until we've saved up.

gayleygoo

colino wrote: »

What kind of car is it, what is the actual fault and what kind of garage keeps a car such a long time to do a simple job? Sounds like a dodgy, "engine reconditioner" that the equally dodgy Dom Littlewood would like to do battle with on behalf of a conshuuuumer.

It's a well known and popular garage. We chose them over a local part-time mechanic because we thought they'd be much quicker than someone who does it in their spare time.

We thought we'd learned our lesson when leaving a previous car into Kwik-Fit for wheel alignment years ago, and ended up paying them £420 for replacement brake pads the car didn't even need.

arcon5

AdrianC wrote: »

One thing to remember - it's not a new car - it's a seven year old car...

OK, with that in mind, £400 for a HG sounds VERY cheap. Unrealistically so. What car is it? What's the hourly labour rate at the garage?

What's the parts bill element of that? Changing a head gasket is rarely as straightforward as just swapping the gasket. The head may have warped, requiring machining, or cracked, requiring replacement. Oil and water may have contaminated each other, requiring cleaning of the cooling system and lubrication system. Since the cambelt has to come off anyway, it'd be foolish not to replace the belt, tensioners, waterpump at the same time. Whilst hoses are off, it'd be foolish not to replace them if they are showing signs of ageing. Have any fasteners seized, requiring machine work or other parts to be replaced?

Although it could be a perfect opportunity to replace all these extras, it is something that should have been discussed before taking on the job. Not something they could just take it on themselves to do at ops cost. So the bill shouldn't be made up of this.

arcon5

Op, you need to find out what exactly they have done, why it's taken so long and if they've deviated unreasonably far from the original then why they have and why they haven't sought authorisation!

gayleygoo

Little update: the cost is not so much an issue now, it's not looking to be as much as expected, and we should manage it. The engine was taken out and sent to be skimmed etc, actually to a guy who lives round the corner from us! So my lovely Dad very kindly paid the £420 bill for that (a service that the garage would have added on £80 profit had we paid them for it), so the rest of the bill will just be for the work done taking it out/putting it in, probably at £30 p/hr, hopefully no more than £500-600.

Last week they said it would be ready on Monday. On Monday, they said they were still working putting the engine back in and it would be ready on Tuesday. On Tuesday, they said "Tomorrow". Phoned again yesterday, same answer again, "Tomorrow". They've had the car for over 20 working days for what everyone has told us was a 4 day job at most (even taking into account that the engine needed sent off!)

They'll be getting no more custom from us, it's been too long unless they can account for why it's taken so long. And hopefully it works, as no guarantee comes with the repair work. Which to me sounds silly because in theory they could charge for doing nothing at all and pretend they did, and they'd have no comeback. Is it normal for there to be no guarantee of skilled work?