Mechanic misdiagnosed can I claim

uhuss11

Hi folks

Tldr

Car had dashboard lights on, took it to a garage. They misdiagnosed the issue, tried multiple racks with no success, and still didn't fix the problem. Charged me £200 for fitting the wrong part and owe me £145. Took it to another garage, they found a wiring fault and fixed it. Thinking of claiming £520 in labour costs from the first garage due to their incompetence. Reasonable?

Car had dashboard lights up took it to mechanic who diagnosed it and checked wiring and said rack needs replacing.

Gave the go ahead to replace it, the garage tried two different racks with no result. Garage insisted I purchase a brand new rack. 

Found a supplier who supply reconditioned racks and garage called them gave them part number,vin number etc but they insisted I make the purchase as they do not use them and they do not cover warranty.

I ordered the part, and wanted to take car home whilst waiting for the part as the car was parked on public road outside garage.

Paid the invoice which was £990 garage said they will refund the part price of £582 and will only be charged one lot of labour. Made them put that in writing on the invoice.

Few days later part arrived, and was told to bring car in. 2 hours later they call me to say it's the wrong part and they have contacted the supplier who are sending the correct part.

Few days after the correct part arrived and part was replaced and problem was not fixed. Garage said they don't know what it is and they've never seen an issue in 20 years,vh and confirmed they've checked all wiring, canbus wires, have WhatsApp screenshots of this.

To make matters worse they also wanted £200 labour for attempting to plug the incorrect part. They deducted this from the £582 they owed. They have since paid £200 leaving a balance of £145 which they have not repaid yet.

Lost confidence in them and took the car for second opinion who said it's likely a wiring fault, told the garage about this and they said I would be wasting money as they have checked that already, they suggested it could be ECU but they need to strip it down and hire electrician to inspect it.

The second garage found the fault and sent me video evidence of the broken wire and the steps they took to fault find. Car is now fixed but I want to put a claim in against the first garage for at least the labour. I still have the original part so I can sell that on.

So I am thinking to reclaim all labour costs from the garage which including the current balance is £520. I'll have to eat the cost of any parts.

Is that Reasonable do you think, do I have a case for compensation, is £520 a fair amount or do I take less if they offer it. Personally I would not use them again, I would not trust them they either lied about wiring or incompetent, also they hired a specialist electrician who charged £80.

droopsnoot

I'd say that it's reasonable that if a garage takes time to try to diagnose a fault on your car, they should be paid for that time, so I don't think that it's reasonable you should expect to get a refund for all the labour charges. How you agree on what proportion of time was diagnosis, and what proportion was fitting parts it didn't need, is the complicated part. 

If you've supplied a part that isn't the correct one, and they've spent time stripping other stuff out of the way to try to fit it, it's not unreasonable that you should pay for that time, too. If anything, it should be the parts supplier that covers that specific bit of wasted time, as they supplied the incorrect part despite you giving VIN, registration etc. This kind of argument is why a lot of garages don't like fitting parts that the customer has supplied.

WellKnownSid

So...

You went to company A who diagnosed the rack.  Company A tried fitting two (second hand?) racks which didn't work.  Company A then sought the specialist advice of company B who concurred with their findings.  Company A wanted to fit a new rack so you contacted company C who supplied the wrong (recon) rack before supplying the correct (recon) rack.  This also did not work.  You then took the car to company D - explaining the backstory - and they successfully traced the fault that both company A and company B could not find.

It sounds as though company A worked through a series of tests before drawing any conclusions, which included hiring a specialist (company B ) in order to be sure.  They obviously trusted company B's work so this skewed their decision making, because they ruled out the wiring as a factor, but it wasn't an entirely unreasonable stance to take.  Given enough time (and your money) they would have probably worked it out in the end.  They also provided some evidence of the work carried out.

Honestly - if you had gone to company D first, there is every chance they might have drawn similar conclusions to company A because at that point your car was completely unknown to them.  Instead, by the time you had approached company D, three racks had already been tried (and thus likely ruled out) - they probably don't know company B so presumably decided the wiring checks were the next most logical place to start looking - especially as it sounds as though company B only spent an hour on it which is not a long time.

I don't believe that this is as clear as you think it is, at least given how you describe it.  Cars are complicated things - if it was simple, you should have just diagnosed the issue yourself on your driveway using a piece of wire and a 5 watt sidelight bulb.

Herzlos

I think it comes down to how reasonable the first garages approach was. Should they have spotted the wiring fault without replacing the rack? Would the 2nd garage have replaced the rack if it hadn't already been done?

With fitting customer supplied parts there's an additional risk because there's no comeback if it's the wrong part or faulty. The garage has to spend the time dismantling the car before discovering the error and they can't deal with the supplier. That's why most garages don't fit customer supplied parts without a good reason.

Where did the first 2 racks come from? I'm assuming they were garage supplied but used? Did the garage charge you for those?

Sadly I think you've got an uphill battle showing what the garage did was unreasonable and that you should be compensated, regardless of who was wrong. You're certainly on the hook for some of the labour time around fitting the part you supplied anyway.

sevenhills

uhuss11 said:

 

Lost confidence in them and took the car for second opinion who said it's likely a wiring fault, told the garage about this and they said I would be wasting money as they have checked that already, they suggested it could be ECU but they need to strip it down and hire electrician to inspect it.

The second garage only found the wiring fault because the first garage had ruled out the rack.

What is this 'rack', roof rack or steering rack?

Ayr_Rage

The OP also has this thread going since 11th April with more information.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6520242/vw-tiguan-power-steering-issue-potential-dispute/p1

chubsta

I took my car into a local garage with a fault, they spent a whole day trying to diagnose it but couldn’t be 100% on what the problem was so suggested I take it to a main dealer. They charged me 2hrs diagnosis instead of the full day and I was happy to pay it as they had done work, albeit with no end result. When I took it in to the main dealer I was able to tell them what had already been done.

uhuss11

The diag charge was free, and the auto electrician was £80, the labour charge to replace the steering rack, which was a 3.2 HR job. Total of about £200.

Then another £200 when the supplier sent the wrong part and garage tried to fit the part.

When they said hasn't seen this problem in 20 years, and when they said we are chasing a ghost in the system, which is why I took it elsewhere.

The garage who fixed the fault stripped the car and tested the voltage coming down the plug. The middle plug was not showing any voltage, then they fault found the break in wire. All evidence is on video.

I asked for compo but completely ignored me.

I also ask supplier of the wrong part that was sent, and they are blaming the garage for not checking the rack before replacing.

Any advice much appreciated.