Car brokedown left in "AA approved garage"

Chatty99

I live near Manchester and my car broke down in Newcastle. Clutch is gone and I get picked up by the AA as I'm a member. I don't have the cover that has them tow me back home, but they take me to an "AA" approved garage and the guy from the AA suspects the new clutch would cost around £250. He drops me off at Halfords. I see the clutch online costs for my car, £65 at automotive. I leave the car at Halfords. Today I get a call £425 is the quote. He refused to give me a cost for labour charges as that "was all inclusive" for me to send down the part seperately and he is also saying that just to put the car back together for myself would be around £325.
Can you let me know what my options are and advice on how I should approach this?
What if I refuse to pay anything.

Thanks in advance of any replies. Any advice welcome or if you could suggest someone else I should ask that would be great.

consumers_revenge

Halfrauds....Nuff said.

Chatty99

What if I refuse to pay and just leave my car there?

BeenThroughItAll

Chatty99 wrote: »

What if I refuse to pay and just leave my car there?

You'll be needing to buy a new car.

guestman

upgrade aa membership and then have the car towed home

AdrianC

If you were to provide the parts yourself, there would be much less comeback on the garage in case of future problems.

The AA patrol's estimate of likely cost is not binding on the garage in any way.

It sounds as if the parts cost is going to be around £100 - cost to fix, £425; cost to reassemble unfixed, £325. I'd suspect there's unlikely to be any significant extra parts required over the clutch kit - although, depending on car, a slave cylinder or various oil seals would also be changed while the gearbox is out.

forgotmyname

Can you buy another car with a brand new clutch for £425?

or should i say can you buy another M3?

stator

That quote doesn't sound particularly bad, but it's not particularly good. The clutch does cost a lot to replace and most of the cost is the labour.

Have they already taken your car apart? He is saying it would cost hundreds whether they replace the clutch or not?
What did you authorise already to be done?

If it is indeed a clutch I would just pay that, it's not too bad a price to bother with towing the car somewhere else.
Plus if you get it done at an independent garage and something goes wrong, do you want to take it back to Newcastle to get it fixed again? Hopefully Halfords would let you take it to a local branch instead for any follow up issues/warranty claims etc.

GothicStirling

That sounds all right to me. I had to replace the clutch on my Toyota IQ in June and that cost £780 (and that was from a reasonably priced garage near where I live and have used for years).

dannyrst

All depends what you've asked them to do. If you haven't authorised them to take your car apart, I'd ask them to return your car as it was and find somewhere cheaper (bear in mind you have to get the car somewhere else). If you authorised them to work on the car, then you have to pay for them to put it back together (in which case, you might aswell pay for the clutch too).

arcon5

What car is it? For some cars that sounds exceptionally cheap.

Add on top of the clutch price gearbox oil easily £15-£30 on top. They have a markup as do all garages.

It's not possible to say whether price is good or bad without full info.

Saying that if