Car repair issue

Foobs

I hope someone can advise me with this as it’s causing a lot of stress!

A long story short. 

My car made bad sound, which I suspected as being the timing chain (common Mini issue). I called the garage and told them of the problem, then sent the car on a trailer to them. I got a call back at the end of the week to say that they had investigated and suspected the same issue. They quoted me approx £1,100 to fix (not their estimate, I can’t remember the exact amount as it was over the phone). The following week I get a call to say that the mechanic had stripped two bolts whilst taking the rocker cover off. He said that he would take the head off a drill the bolts out. No mention of additional cost to me or the extent of work involved (the have a telephone recording of this conversation) I thought, if I’m unlucky and they do charge, it would be around £100-£150 extra for the additional labour.

Four weeks pass, with a mechanic holiday, and the job gets to the end. Whilst testing the repaired car they find another issue with the alternator and quote me £350 for the additional work, which I agree to.

I get a final bill for £3,176! I was expecting a bill of £1,450, or £1,600, if I was unlucky and they charged me for the head work.

Now we are in dispute as I agreed to the work, but they have admitted that the mechanic didn’t give me the full picture with regards to cost or the amount of work involved to remove the corroded bolts.

As I had the option to do the work myself taken away from me and I cannot get the garage to put the car back to the condition that it was in prior to all of this, I have priced the job up using our local DIY garage and parts sourced from different motor factors (less the engineering work) and have offered to pay this as an additional amount to the original bill (approx £600).

Am I being unreasonable or too generous?

m0bov

You can pay under protest and then LBS for the difference, if the garage fouled up the job that's their problem.

mattyprice4004

m0bov said:

You can pay under protest and then LBS for the difference, if the garage fouled up the job that's their problem.

Not really, if it's an older Mini with the notorious N47 engine then bolts can and do break on removal even with all the care in the world. 
Mechanics can't be expected to invest their time for free when something goes wrong outside of their control - and bolts snapping is a prime example of this. 

To the OP, expecting another £100-£150 for head removal and drilling out / retapping of 2 bolts was way off the mark - removing the head on an N47 engine is an involved job and needs most things around it stripping off for access. 
£3k+ does seem high, but if you could post a breakdown of these costs we might be able to explain it better.
As for offering another £600, you need to add the engineering work to this as the bolts snapping isn't their fault. 

Foobs

mattyprice4004 said:

m0bov said:

You can pay under protest and then LBS for the difference, if the garage fouled up the job that's their problem.

Not really, if it's an older Mini with the notorious N47 engine then bolts can and do break on removal even with all the care in the world. 
Mechanics can't be expected to invest their time for free when something goes wrong outside of their control - and bolts snapping is a prime example of this. 

To the OP, expecting another £100-£150 for head removal and drilling out / retapping of 2 bolts was way off the mark - removing the head on an N47 engine is an involved job and needs most things around it stripping off for access. 
£3k+ does seem high, but if you could post a breakdown of these costs we might be able to explain it better.
As for offering another £600, you need to add the engineering work to this as the bolts snapping isn't their fault. 

The actual cost for removing the bolts was £150. So yes £750. The part where the garage ignored to inform me that it would need a complete head strip and rebuild with the associated cost is really the issue here.

Foobs

m0bov said:

You can pay under protest and then LBS for the difference, if the garage fouled up the job that's their problem.

Sorry, what’s LBS?

Aylesbury_Duck

Foobs said:

m0bov said:

You can pay under protest and then LBS for the difference, if the garage fouled up the job that's their problem.

Sorry, what’s LBS?

Probably a typo.  LBA - letter before action.