Unhappy with garage repairs - paid on credit card

Vic1987edw

Background: I broke down in December with a coolant low warning on my car. This was the only warning, and when I was recovered by AA the only fault found was that the coolant tank had split. This was repaired and a diagnostic found that there was another fault that caused and it required a timing belt, more coolant etc. £350 in total. I paid this by credit card. 

I picked up the car, and the engine management light was on. It also had a coolant fault still present. So the car went back to them again. They run more diagnostics and agreed they didn’t know what was wrong or how to fix it. They advised to take to a Vauxhall specialist or dealership. 

The Vauxhall specialist is now saying they have left a vacuum hose hanging out and something the original garage have done has caused the EML faults (7 in total) and they basically need to start from scratch because they carried out work that wasn’t essential to fixing the original fault. 

The relationship between myself and the mechanic is strained and he is refusing to give myself or the specialist garage anymore info than “I don’t know how to fix it” not even as much as what he has carried out!

Questions: 

Because this was paid by Credit Card am I protected seeming as the repairs that cost £350 didn’t fix anything ans caused more faults? 

If so, how do I go about this? 

If not, what else can I do? The garage is a Halfords chain, but I can’t find a complaints department apart from for their retail side of things. 

eskbanker

Vic1987edw said:

The garage is a Halfords chain, but I can’t find a complaints department apart from for their retail side of things. 

You should have section 75 rights via your card company but it would probably make more sense to complain to Halfords first - start at https://www.halfords.com/autocentres-contact-content.html

[Deleted User]

You could raise a chargeback but Halfords will almost certainly have it reversed, showing that they did the work.  Section 75 is an option in theory, but would be incredibly arduous and I'd be dubious about success.

Making a complaint to Halfords is likely to be the most productive route.

https://www.halfords.com/customer-services/contact-us/autocentres/

Vic1987edw

Thank you for the link! I couldn’t find it myself. I have done this. They are looking into it with the garage. So I’m not hopeful. 

cx6

if you paid by credit card then you have the same rights against the card company as you have against the garage.

Thus if you can claim against your garage for the costs of putting their faulty repair right, then you can claim the same amount against the card company using s75.