RAC Vehicle Inspection - Waste of money and extremely misleading

jmajithia108

Exactly and they did none of this. All they did is stop and start the car a few times. And that is exactly what my mechanic checked.

jmajithia108

Had a disco 3 before and have only had the breakdown out once. Although the car was great mates with my mechanic 👍👍👍

jmajithia108

No actually he would have found similar results to my mechanic. The battery had been on its last legs for a while and some simple readings could have told you that. Testing the crank power is not complicated. This is to do with the fact that the RAC claim to do a full mechanical inspection but actually don’t even attempt to test the battery. It’s the miss selling of information.

F1F93

If you had a puncture, would you still be this angry because the RAC didnt tell you that the tyre was weak and about to get a nail buried in it? No, because that's absurd.

All your mechanic will have done is measured the battery with a voltmeter. Its low. Which is why it's not starting the car. In the puncture analogy, this is the equivalent of saying that your punctured tyre had 0 psi.

Even if the RAC had done the test you wanted them to do, it would have shown a perfectly fine battery.

jmajithia108 wrote: »

No actually he would have found similar results to my mechanic. The battery had been on its last legs for a while and some simple readings could have told you that. Testing the crank power is not complicated. This is to do with the fact that the RAC claim to do a full mechanical inspection but actually don’t even attempt to test the battery. It’s the miss selling of information.

Right, let's sort something out. What exactly is the "crank power" that you keep going on about? Let's use the actual terms - do you mean Watts, Voltage, Amps...?

And if testing this is not complicated and would have told you it was a duff battery, why did you not do it yourself?

forgotmyname

jmajithia108 wrote: »

No actually he would have found similar results to my mechanic. The battery had been on its last legs for a while and some simple readings could have told you that. Testing the crank power is not complicated. This is to do with the fact that the RAC claim to do a full mechanical inspection but actually don’t even attempt to test the battery. It’s the miss selling of information.

Not quite that simple.

Take a brand new fully charged battery and then leave the lights on for a while to drop the voltage. Now do a drop test on the battery.
Sorry your battery is bad and you need a new one.

Now charge that battery fully and see it pass the test with flying colours.

Had someone say their battery was perfect but the car would not start. Voltmeter on and it was 12.6 volts.. All good you would think.
Got them to put the headlights on and the voltage immediately dropped to below 10 volts.

Easy to sell you a new battery and show the old one as duff even its its still OK.

custardy

jmajithia108 wrote: »

Exactly and they did none of this. All they did is stop and start the car a few times. And that is exactly what my mechanic checked.

jmajithia108 wrote: »

No actually he would have found similar results to my mechanic. The battery had been on its last legs for a while and some simple readings could have told you that. Testing the crank power is not complicated. This is to do with the fact that the RAC claim to do a full mechanical inspection but actually don’t even attempt to test the battery. It’s the miss selling of information.

So which is it?

Start/stop a few times or check cranking power?

AdrianC

A Disco 4 battery is not £300.

The OP hasn't mentioned stop-start. If it doesn't have that, then it uses a standard 017 battery, less than £100 even for the best name-brands.

Even if it does have stop-start, then there are people on the 'bay selling new OEM JLR-branded Exide AGM batteries for less than a hundred quid.

So not only does he expect the inspection to tell him things that not only aren't straightforward and aren't on the pre-sale list, but he's been tucked up like a kipper on the replacement battery.

Keep_pedalling

AdrianC wrote: »

A Disco 4 battery is not £300.

The OP hasn't mentioned stop-start. If it doesn't have that, then it uses a standard 017 battery, less than £100 even for the best name-brands.

Even if it does have stop-start, then there are people on the 'bay selling new OEM JLR-branded Exide AGM batteries for less than a hundred quid.

So not only does he expect the inspection to tell him things that not only aren't straightforward and aren't on the pre-sale list, but he's been tucked up like a kipper on the replacement battery.

I thought the OP should be directing his anger at whoever sold him the battery at that price. Even going to Halfords the most expensive stop start battery is £184.

Battery performance is heavily effected by temperature and until very recently it have been quite mild, so hardly a coincidence it failed after the temperatures have plummeted in the last week.

waamo

Was it the "friendly" mechanic, the one who pronounced the other battery knackered, who flogged the £300 new battery?

New_World_Man

Perhaps the friendly mechanic should have done the initial inspection.