Garage fault finding fees

NANANINANOONOO

Hi I am hoping some one can advise please. My daughters Renault kangoo wouldn’t start and AA got her home. When it happened again she bought a new battery but it let her down again. The AA recovery again couldn’t find fault but said it must be an electrical issue which he couldn’t ID with his recovery equipment. She took van to two different garages and both said couldn’t find the fault and both advised electrical fault and to go to Renault dealership as they could check on their system to identify electrical fault. At a quoted cost of £120 Renault were supposed to check electrical system but they rang her to say no fault found and they need to try something with fuel pipe at a cost of further £120 + £400 for new pipe. She asked why they hadn’t run it through electrical check as requested and they said that is last thing they check and only after all other checks done and will cost another £120! She can’t afford all these extras and just wanted to have electrics checked, then depending on findings decide wether to keep van or not. It seems like they are taking advantage of her and ignoring she has had all other things checked already and just needs the electrical fault identified.
Can anyone suggest how to proceed Please?

Aylesbury_Duck

It's reasonable for them to charge for diagnosis, after all, who works for nothing? And it sounds like they did the electrical check and found nothing. The important question here is that did she agree to the additional work? From the way you've written it, they called her, outlined what they wanted to do and she agreed? Or is it the case that it's still sat with them awaiting her agreement to the fuel pipe change?

The other consideration here is whether she can call on consumer rights legislation if needed. A van suggests it might be a business transaction? That doesn't affect my advice above, but it might be relevant as the situation develops.

HillStreetBlues

NANANINANOONOO said:

Hi I am hoping some one can advise please. My daughters Renault kangoo wouldn’t start and AA got her home. When it happened again she bought a new battery but it let her down again. The AA recovery again couldn’t find fault but said it must be an electrical issue which he couldn’t ID with his recovery equipment. She took van to two different garages and both said couldn’t find the fault and both advised electrical fault and to go to Renault dealership as they could check on their system to identify electrical fault. At a quoted cost of £120 Renault were supposed to check electrical system but they rang her to say no fault found and they need to try something with fuel pipe at a cost of further £120 + £400 for new pipe. She asked why they hadn’t run it through electrical check as requested and they said that is last thing they check and only after all other checks done and will cost another £120! She can’t afford all these extras and just wanted to have electrics checked, then depending on findings decide wether to keep van or not. It seems like they are taking advantage of her and ignoring she has had all other things checked already and just needs the electrical fault identified.
Can anyone suggest how to proceed Please?

I'm not up on modern cars that are suppose to tell you what's wrong with it.
But in the old day you would test a fuel pipe by seeing if it delivers fuel!

NANANINANOONOO

It’s her own van, she is self employed lady painter and decorator.
She is of course happy to pay diagnostic fee and for any electrical repairs needed on top.
She is concerned that the AA tested and found no faults but several electrical faults flagged up but his machine could not identify them so advised go to Renault dealer for electronics test.  Two other garages advised exactly the same.
She took to Renault dealership and explained she needed them to identify electrical fault.
Why can’t they just test electrics as requested first, why incur other costly time doing things already checked?

NANANINANOONOO

NB:  They said they have not tested electrics yet as it is last thing they do.

Alderbank

As she is self-employed painter & decorator her works van will be B2B rather than consumer purchase.

How old is it? Kangoo vans have been around since 1997

Aylesbury_Duck

NANANINANOONOO said:

It’s her own van, she is self employed lady painter and decorator.
She is of course happy to pay diagnostic fee and for any electrical repairs needed on top.
She is concerned that the AA tested and found no faults but several electrical faults flagged up but his machine could not identify them so advised go to Renault dealer for electronics test.  Two other garages advised exactly the same.
She took to Renault dealership and explained she needed them to identify electrical fault.
Why can’t they just test electrics as requested first, why incur other costly time doing things already checked?

This all comes down to exactly what she asked them to do, and what she agreed they could do.  When they suggested the other inspection/repairs, did she agree to them, or not?

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Alderbank said:

As she is self-employed painter & decorator her works van will be B2B rather than consumer purchase.

How old is it? Kangoo vans have been around since 1997

I think this depends upon whether the van purchase was accounted for as a capital allowance or not.

If a sole trader is simply claiming milage as an expense and using the vehicle for their day to day personal requirements as well (perhaps because they can only afford the one vehicle) I think it would be a consumer issue with the garage. 

OP as Aylesbury says it really comes down to what was agreed, before they did the work they should have told her how the price is to be calculated and the main characteristics of the service, if this was done in the garage and verbal it's harder to prove but I would have thought a dealership would give some paperwork before they start the work.

Does your daughter have any paperwork? if so what does it say and was it given before the work started, in the middle between various tests or at the end? 

sheramber

We had ongoing problems with our  skoda radio ( which my husband narrowed down to a faulty aerial in the windscreen.) But the garage denied this and kept testing other parts of the system , which my husband had already tested and knew they were not faulty.

the car was in the garage several times with no result. We lived rurally where the radio didn't work properly, but the garage was in the town and it worked there.

They gave us  a courtesy car and kept the car for a week. The radio in the courtesy car worked fine.

It took 9 months  before a similar fault was reported in another garage in another town and diagnosed as a faulty aerial in the windscreen.

The service engineer explained that they had to fault find in a specific order and the aerial in the windscreen was the last on the list.

Fortunately, the car was under warranty when first reported, although it was out of warranty by the time it was fixed, so it  didn't cost us and they did make good our fuel costs for travelling 200 miles per journey each time.