Garage done work that was not required - Do i have any comeback ?

wrightk

Austinhead wrote: »

Hi,

I am hoping that someone can offer some advice here.

Late last year my car developed an intermittent starting problem, where the car would not even attempt to start. I suspected this wasn't a battery fault as all the electrics in the car were working fine. The car could be jump started.
Since it was intermittent if I drove the car to a garage I have used several times before, but they were unable to reproduce the fault and so no work was done.

In mid Jan the problem reoccurred on a Sat afternoon, unfortunately my partner was away and we have 3 kids (plus I work FT) so I booked it into the same garage, thinking I would need to jump start the car using the hill near our house, and booked a hire car.

On the Monday morning I attempted to start the car, it started first time. I took the car to the garage, confirmed that it wouldn't start before i gave them the keys and reiterated the symptoms to them.
They phoned later to say that the starter motor was at fault, and the cost of replacement was £336.
The work was done.

On Sat i drove into town, went to the shops, came back to the car only to find it wouldn't start. Exactly the same symptoms as previously. All the electrics work, but the car made no attempt to start.

I called the RAC (didn't have home start cover), they came out and after a few minutes diagnosed the problem as corrosion on the spade connector to the starter motor, along with a loose fit.

The guy from the RAC was fairly confident that this was probably the issue all along - although this obviously can't be proven. The notes I have from them detail the problem.

Do I have any come back to the garage on this ?. Whilst I understand that people do make mistakes, this is beyond me, how they can check it before replacing the starter motor and not notice then, and then go 1 further and actually disconnect and replace the starter motor without either cleaning the connector, or ensuring a tight fit, is just incompetence.

This mistake might have cost me the best part of £450.

I did call the garage when the car wouldn't start on Sat, and they said if I could get it to them, they would have a look. Since the RAC fixed it, and didn't feel it needed any further work, I haven't been in touch with the garage again.

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on this, £450 is a lot of dosh, not to mention the inconvenience of it all.

Thanks in advance.

A lot of the posts on here are actually irrelevant

When you broke down after the replacement you should have phoned the garage not the RAC and got them to;

-recover the vehicle free of charge (most garages have their own recovery truck)
-Arrange via you to have it recovered to them if you already have cover (which they already offered)
-get them not the RAC to diagnose and fix the fault

After that you would be in a much better negotiating position regarding the original repair.
You needed to give the garage the chance to rectify the situation. It makes it much more complicated legally as you haven't done this and all the posts above are an example of some of the defence the garages may come up with

The best thing you can do after this is vote with your feet and find a more reputable local garage that you can trust and chalk this up to experience

Austinhead

The first thing I did do was the phone the garage. I explained that I had the starter motor replaced a few weeks ago and now the car wouldn't start showing the same symptoms as before I had it replaced.
I was told that unfortunately they didn't have any facility to recover my car but if I could get it to them they would have a look.
I didn't have much choice but to phone the RAC, and after what I was told I decided to get some advice before going back to the garage.

Cost of £450 includes hiring a car to ensure I could get to work and get the kids to school. As previously they had been unable to diagnose the problem I thought it necessary to get a hire car for the duration my partner was away.

fred246

Wrightk is saying that the garage should have been given a chance to cover up their poor work rather than let the RAC expose the truth.

fred246

Changing the starter motor did not cure the problem. Cleaning the connections did. I would expect a mechanic to check the connections before replacing the starter motor. I think a judge would understand that. You have quite a good case. I would have some sympathy for the mechanic, though if you won £450 because diagnosing faults isn't always easy. Talk to the garage and see if they will give you some sort of a refund in recognition of the fact you paid a lot of money for a job which didn't cure the fault.

wrightk

fred246 wrote: »

Wrightk is saying that the garage should have been given a chance to cover up their poor work rather than let the RAC expose the truth.

Not at all actually. If the OP decided to open up a claim for compensation against the garage and having not given the garage a chance to rectify the situation the OP would not have a case at all.

However the OP could have used this information from the RAC to put the garage on the spot if they did try a cover up

The OP is now in a situation with a car that is working as it should where they retrospectively want to claim their money back weeks after the initial problem, with no proof (other than the say so of an rac man) and having not given the garage any chance to rectify their mistake. And there are some who advocate wasting even more of the OP's cash on a claim which is unlikely to end in success

Its not fair but then you live and learn..

Nobbie1967

fred246 wrote: »

Changing the starter motor did not cure the problem. Cleaning the connections did. I would expect a mechanic to check the connections before replacing the starter motor. I think a judge would understand that. You have quite a good case. I would have some sympathy for the mechanic, though if you won £450 because diagnosing faults isn't always easy. Talk to the garage and see if they will give you some sort of a refund in recognition of the fact you paid a lot of money for a job which didn't cure the fault.

I pretty much agree with this, but if you're paying a garage £336 to replace a starter motor, then it's a fair assumption that most of that is labour. That implies a pretty high hourly cost as changing a starter on most cars takes minutes rather than hours. You pay this high rate to cover training and equipment in the expectation that they know what they are doing, but sadly they often just swap parts and hope it works rather than doing proper fault finding.

In this case there are three possible scenarios:

1) Starter motor was faulty, but when refitted, the connector was not refitted properly.

2) Connector was always faulty, but garage unnecessarily changed the starter motor.

3) Starter motor and connector were both faulty, but garage only changed the starter motor as this was the first fault they found.

In all cases the garage is at fault to some degree, but only in scenario 2) are they liable for not us exercising 'reasonable skill and care'

Unfortunately, without the old starter motor, there is no way of proving which of the two most likely scenarios 1) & 2) actually happened. I'd say it was more likely 2), but who knows what a judge might think. I think I'd ask for a goodwill gesture from the garage.

Out of interest, what car was this for and was it a main dealer? Might give an idea of whether you were shafted on the cost of the original repair.

droopsnoot

Nobbie1967 wrote: »

as changing a starter on most cars takes minutes rather than hours.

As we don't know what kind of car it is, that's a bit of an assumption which others have also made. Changing the starter motor itself is very often a case of disconnecting the connector(s), undoing a couple of bolts, bolting the new one in and re-connecting the wires, but the problem on a lot of modern cars is getting to the thing in the first place. We don't know how long they spent removing engine bay covers, undertrays, and getting other stuff out of the way to get to even see the starter motor, all of which then had to replaced after the job. Just because the RAC man can get to the connector on the side of the road doesn't mean it's then easy to get the motor in or out, and the RAC man may only have thought to even look at the state of the connector because the OP had already told him (or it was obvious from the state of it) that the starter motor was new.


Hindsight is always a wonderful thing though.

Austinhead

wrightk wrote: »

Not at all actually. If the OP decided to open up a claim for compensation against the garage and having not given the garage a chance to rectify the situation the OP would not have a case at all.

.

I could not get the car to the garage, it wouldn't start !!.

Car is a Mazda 3, it's a 55 plate so it's done a few miles. I have no idea how long it would have taken to replace, but a quick look on Halfords (not the cheapest i'm sure) is a cost of £140 for the part, so they added £200 for the service costs.

The garage I took it to is not a main dealer.

fred246

If you had got it back to the garage, they'd have taken a look at it, cleaned the terminals, admitted they had made a mistake and refunded you the £336 in full.

fred246

In case you are wondering I am not being serious!