Charge for a quote.

Aylesbury_Duck

It's totally fair. They collected the car from you, saving you having to take it there, and spent time diagnosing the fault, only for you to ring around and give the work to one of their competitors. I think you're being unfair to expect them to do all of that for nothing. It suggests you don't value their time or expertise.

motorguy

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

It's totally fair. They collected the car from you, saving you having to take it there, and spent time diagnosing the fault, only for you to ring around and give the work to one of their competitors. I think you're being unfair to expect them to do all of that for nothing. It suggests you don't value their time or expertise.

Without them having to diagnose it either.... soooo glad to be out of the motor trade when you see behaviours like this.

seatbeltnoob

In a garage owners forum, they posted about OP about customers from hell. Wasting their time getting quotes and fault finding the only take it away to a cheaper place.


IMHO, garages that give you a price over the phone only end up increasing the price later on for "things that needed doing because, its faulty and affects the job we're trying to do". It's not a scam and could be genuine. If you take in a car with worn out control arm ball joints, and it turns out your inner tie rods and banged up too, it would be irresponsible for the garage not to phone up and advise that to be done too. Then you have tracking into the mix.



The phone quote is an estimate and is the price you pay in the absolute best case scenario. The garage that looked at the car and gave you a price is likely to be the most accurate in terms of pricing. There are probably other issues seized nuts, rust etc that they haven't informed you about that they included in the cost, which the other garage doesn't know about so hasn't included in the cost. But will add on once they finish the job.

Jackmydad

There is no such thing as a "free quote".
All the time spent in a workshop has to be paid for somehow.
Businesses are in business to make money.