Garage rip off horror stories, please add yours

[Rocket88]

One to kick off with............Many moons ago, an elderly gentleman took his E30 Beemer to our local main agent for a massive service before setting out "sur Le Continonte" for a three month jaunt. On returning to collect said vehicle, he received a bill just slightly south of an obscene amount of wedge. Amongst the three pages of theusual dealer speak, such as " valet the vehicle interior, using essence of selected Peruvian yaks etc" was a lengthy disertation entitled "brakes"

This detailed how they'd lovingly "removed the alloy road wheels, cleaned the brake assemblies with myrhh etc etc". At this point, the valued client reached into his pocket, and popped the key to the locking wheel nuts onto the counter. Apparently, this provoked a fit of violent coughing from the service manager, and an interesting change in his complexion.

To cut a long story short, the bill was "adjusted" and valued client was offered various "inducements", which, be a wise old giffer, he accepted with alacrity.

[meggersdog]

About 15 years ago a mate of mine called round my house with his mother's CVH Escort.The oil filler cap kept blowing off and there was oil everywhere."Looks like a breather problem" says I.On the back of the inlet manifold (driver's side) is a T piece that a breather pipe and vacuum hose go to.Sure enough when I removed the breather pipe this T piece was blocked solid with carbon.I told him if he had ten minutes I could fix it there and then.I unsrewed the T,put it in the vice and drilled out the carbon build up.I then tackled the vacuum part with an 8th drill bit.

It was only after I had put it back together that my mate told me his mother had taken the car to a garage a month earlier with this exact problem.Due to excessive breathing the garage had fitted a re-con engine !!! Obviously a re-con engine didn't come with manifolds so they had fitted the old inlet manifold complete with blocked breather.

How's that for a horror story ?

[theorganist]

How's that for a horror story ?

 

I have a similar story to that.

 

In 1993 I bought a 1981 Fiesta 1100 for £450, it looked tidy (it turned out to be a shed).

 

It ran terribly from cold, no matter what you did with the choke and I was told I needed a new Carbauretter, so I had a nice Weber one fitted! It still wasn't any better and the garage told me I needed a new engine. I paid £425 IIRC for a recon engine.

 

Although it was better it still wasn't great and a friend of mine (who was a trainee mechanic) told me he suspected it was the breather hoses! I got rid of it not that long after, I hated the car anyway.

 

When I think of the story I feel quite ashamed but I knew very little about the mechanics of cars in those days, even less than I do now!!

[richardthestag]

When I had a mk2 1.6L cav as a daily company and then personal car I soon got wind of the Vauxhall Stealership network.

 

Services were anything but, I was on more than one occasion charged for new plugs and yet when pulled the HT lead off the “new†plugs were already prestained with 10's of thousands of miles worth of engine crud. I doubt that they even bothered to whip em out and check the gap. I had an essential headlamp alignment which they managed to complete without disturbing the dead flies embedded in the adjustment screws. I even paid through the nose for a monkey to fill my washer bottle with my halfrauds brand of washer fluid that I kept under the bonnet. They even left the empty bottle to taunt me. Watery black oil on the dipstick after an oil change “yes sir we recommend an engine flush to clear all the old oilâ€Â!!! FFS isn’t that what the sump plug is supposed to do? On each occasion I challenged them and they’d knock it off the bill. I tried 2 different local dealers and they offered the same level of mistakes.

 

The second dealer told me that I needed new discs on the front but when I checked them before I paid you could still see the rust on the old fuckers. “Oh! They (the monkeys?) must have run out of time†was the excuse. I refused to pay for the service and would only pay for parts fitted if they could prove that they had done the work and threatened trading standards. An independent check at a back street garage told me that although there were new pads the old disks had plenty of life in them!!

 

It was at that point I stopped using Vauxhall dealers. The car ran pretty much faultlessly for the next 150,000ish miles until Vauxhall got their hands on it again and fucked the head gaskit while one of their monkeys was checking it over as part of a £1k trade in against a year old mk3 Cav. I could even hear the bastard revving the nads off it – you know what your car sounds like after 5 years and 180k miles

 

Arsehole sales man is a crap suit then comes out to tell me head gaskit is fucked and that the trade in price has just dropped to £600. Out of principle I went next door to Ford and bought a Mondeo. Ford couldn’t have been more helpful. Drove my Mondeo back to Vauxhall just to wind up the cretin sales prat who rushed out to say that he had spoken to his sales manager and could offer £700 trade in.

 

P.s. Both Vauxhall dealers outlined above have now gone out of business but I expect the sharks who operated in them have simply moved their practices elsewhere.

[Station]

I still have the receipt from 2003. After an MOT fail was quoted to fix a loose indicator lens and a wishbone bush for 350 quid.

[Bren]

Many moons ago I took my SD1 Vitesse to a couple of "specialists" in the cheshire area. Hole in O/S front wing plated without covering the windscreen - the spatter stuck to the glass.

 

I was also informed that my expensive rear coil - overs were knackered and that they had fitted a set of standard items, minus the metal sleeve in the middle of the lower bushes - it was obviously too difficult to fit them properly with the sleeves in place.No doubt the "knackered" items ended up on one of their own cars.

 

And they had the cheek to take the piss out of other peoples work!

 

I had various other gripes with them, thankfully they are no longer around. If the oxford english dictionary had "garage cowboys" listed in its pages it would be next to a picture of these cretins.

[scooters]

2 words:

 

Kwik and Fit

 

'nuff said

[bangers & mash]

Got made redundant in 1991 from a franchised dealer. To get back on the spanners again, I took a job at a local independant fast fit place.

 

I was greeted on my first day of work by the owner with a new can of wd40. He then explained that to me that it was to spray on the old shockers and, that all brake pads needed new discs fitted. I told him he could keep his can of spray and put my toolbox back in my van.

 

When I worked at the old Vauxhall dealers in Armley, most of the grease monkeys would claim for stuff like clutch and bonnet release cable adjustment. In most cases the customer was charged the Vauxhall standard time for doing nothing, all so the grease monkey could get a few quid in bonus money at the end of the month.

[Shep Shepherd]

2 words:

 

Kwik and Fit

 

'nuff said

 

Seconded.

[Guest]

About ten years ago a 1700 td cavalier arrived for a replacement engine at a workshop I know. It was in as it ran poorly due to a cracked head as proclaimed by a mechanic elsewhere. It was checked over to double check the diognosis was correct and it wasnt as the car (A diesel dont forget) had some petrol in it hence the shit running. This was then flushed out and new filters fitted and it ran tip top. The engine number was then ground off - the engine gunked clean and 1 bill for a new engine and labour presented to a happy owner unaware he had just been shafted.

[autofive]

a couple of weeks ago i left my car with a reputable garage and when i returned a couple of days later, he had removed the engine and provided electricity, tools and cups of coffee then refused to take payment

 

bloody scaryoldcortina

[M'coli]

Picture the scene: 1970s; local garage and MOT place, my old man is in getting the car MOT'd (Morris Oxford or a Herald, I can't remember the car or this incident so it must have been the Ox, as I can remember getting the first Herald when I was 3...); an old dear comes in to ask how much it would cost to have the oil leak fixed on her car; the Man From The Garage has a look around the engine, gives his spiel and finished with a quote of "£80".

 

 

 

The old dear then says, "You can buy a lot of oil for £80. Thank you, Goodbye!"

[cms206]

Farmer Autocare.

 

"Yes Mr Campbell, your car isn't actually running any more..."

"But it went in for a service?" (my fault, recommendations + lack of being arsed)

"Well... we'll have to order more bits to try to get it running, which'll bring the total to... "

" "

 

 

That and Byres Road Garage in Glasgow fucking about taking sound deadening off to inspect stuff for MOT, but that makes me angry to even think about.

[londonm]

As part of a ludicrous rip-off service of my girlfriends new shape agila, Phoenix Vauxhall Wimbledon wanted to charge her £100.00 to supply and fit a pollen filter. The second word of my answer to them was 'off'.

 

They're not there anymore, the c****s.

[R9UKE]

I remember my aunt in Birmingham phoning me a few years back saying that her 2000 Renault Clio was making a roaring noise which got worse with speed. I was due over in a few weeks and her description of it was crap, I told her to pop into the garage on her way to work some day and get an opinion but not do anything til I'm over. She called again pretty annoyed that the garage said she needs a new gearbox and had quoted about the same as the car is worth to do the job. I arrived a few days later.... One noisy rear wheel bearing. Made me very very angry.

[Negative Creep]

I think I must be lucky as the nearest I've had was a garage saying I needed new discs and pads for the MOT when they had loads of life left and were passed by another place.

[Junkman]

Ninety-five quid. They charge more than hookers and are not nearly as nice to fuck.

[Honey Badger]

Honda dealer told my wife that the S2000 brakes were dangerous after a servic and she couldn't drive it but they could fit replacemnts for £650 that afternoon, they soon changed the story when she told them that the disks and pads had been done by Honda under warranty less than 18000 miles ago and what kind of shit brake parts are Honda fitting now, maybe she should talk to Honda uk to check.

 

Cue much worried mumbling and a promise to check that there hadn't been a mistake, lo and behold a call 30 min later from the service manger and an apology, with a discount for next years service. Same discs and pads are still on the car 3 years later.

 

The other feckin Honda dealer in the area tried to charge for a replacement air con condenser and split pipe when all the A/C needed was a regas, gave the service manger an earful then as well.

[Barry Cade]

The other feckin Honda dealer in the area tried to charge for a replacement air con condenser and split pipe when all the A/C needed was a regas, gave the service manger an earful then as well.

Was that a clue to the garage's identity?

[drum]

About three years ago the wife's 55 plate Astra was running rough. A local garage that I don't usually use had recently kitted themselves out with diagnostic equipment so I booked it in the following day for their £50 diagnosis. The car was dropped off in the morning and I got a call in the afternoon telling me the car was ready to be picked up - and the bill is £380. They had replaced the coil pack and changed the plugs. WTF? Modern shit encourages for this kind of rip off.

[Station]

In 2000, my Astra went in for it's MOT. It needed new drop links and top mounts. The front indicator was hanging out (oops!).

They wanted £600 to fix!

[meggersdog]

Just the other day a woman who lives down the road collared me. "you know about cars,can you look at my car it's making a funny noise " she said.Unfortunately she owns a BINI (mobile hairdresser too) and had just had the car serviced.The garage had the car over a week and when she asked if it was ready they told her it needed a new oil filter after being serviced and quoted £300.00.

Knowing an oil filter change is part of a full service she took the car away.I lifted the bonnet and checked the garage hadn't cracked the filter housing and were quoting for that.All seemed fine and the oil was fresh.When I started the engine the timing chain was rattling and this was the noise she had heard.Oh dear, the oil light was on on tick-over too.She insisted the car wasn't like that before it had a service. The first thing to do would be to change the oil and filter again.The wrong oil might be causing the tensioner to fail if it's too thick.

After cutting a 35mm deep socket down to fit I removed the oil filter.It was new but comparing it to the one I had mine had plastic covers top and bottom the one fitted was just bare element.Looking inside the housing there is a pressure relief valve which, on reflection, was probably snagged open on the paper element.I think the oil was being pumped into the filter housing then getting dumped straight back into the sump.Fresh oil and the correct filter cured the problem and for a lot less than the £300.00 quoted for something the garage had caused.

[brickwall]

My maw has "borrowed" my C70 converti-car this last year and she saw a Volvo dealership and popped in to get it a once over. The car got fucked up by a pals mad horse and looks like it was in a smash. They did a full diagnostic whilst  my mum went shopping and then phoned her and said they could sort it all out for £2700 not including the bodywork. She got them to reset the SRS light and then buggered off. Brake pads, discs, service and lights reset. I did it all except the srs by pulling fuses and unplugging everything .Car value:£400

 

PS, they did Valet it for nowt, so there you go.

[beko1987]

I'm glad I have a reputable garage!

 

Just been round to diagnose a spinning wheel bolt. I;ve swapped other bolts to that hole before and theyve all spun. Matey got his ratchet out, removed another bolt and the fucker nipped up nicely in the previously bad hole. Previously spinny bolt nipped up tight in the other hole...

 

Que me looking a bit of a tit despite doing this before and it not working, but he said see how that is and if it starts to loosen again, he can re-tap and fit a larger bolt for £30.

[Spiny Norman]

My mate was just stung £240 for two tyres for a boggo Mazda 2 which seems a tad excessive to me, or are tyres that expensive now?

[rml2345]

£240 for two tyres is a proper rip off!

I'm lucky in that the two garages I use seem to be fair and honest when it comes to mending stuff.

[makum101]

I have one to counter balance the rip offs that happened to me just last week in my 2 year old Insignia...

Steering started making an incredably loud noise so I pulled into the first little back street garage I passed. "Thats you power steering mate". After taking a look he went off to price up a P/S pipe that had burst. He returned and said Vauxhall had the part in but it would be £180 inc fitting. I said Okay It has to be done. He then looked at my reg and said this is less than 3 years old and should still be under warranty. I said I didnt buy it new and only got a one year warranty which had now expired. Off he went to his office and returned after about 5 minutes to tell me... "Just rang Vauxhall and it is under warranty so Ive booked it in for tomorrow for you at the local dealers. He then filled up my P/S reservoir before I left. He wouldn't even take a tenner for his trouble!

Flippin amazing!

 

[mercrocker]

I must admit I have had more experiences like makum101 than anything scarily rippy-off-bastardish but maybe its because I have generally driven the kind of shite that gets left in workshops for them to try and flog six months later to defray storage....However, I am convinced there is a major scam going on with main dealers and it concerns "recalls".   Twice at work its happened to Toyota owners of leggy Yarisses or Yarisi or whatever the plural is for Arse in Japanese.  They get a letter saying "your airbag thingy is a bit  wobbly we fucked it up 15 years ago but perhaps you could bring the car in at no cost for a safety check so it doesnt go off by accident and take your face off " or something similar EFA.    Off they trot with  their leggy Yaris and leave it (no courtesy car so frantic calls to  office from panting, late workmates "can you pick me up on dock  road)

for the "upgrade".   When you go and collect your stunted little shiter you find that dealer the stealer has done a full "Kwik-Fit-Up" stylee Sayefteeechek and you now need  to spend 800 sovs on a knackered Yaris so that the brake discs are at  production line tolerance, blah de blah.   Blokes they tried it on with are long in the tooth and fuckin skint so  no deal, mr dealer.  However when Doris Bonkers takes hers in you bet your life she gets the visa out quicker than the dealer can say - "Would madam consider the benefits of our wonderful new car purchase plan"

[Split_Pin]

A garage I used to use in Linlithgow would repair your car by fixing the symptoms of a problem before actually curing it, by which time you had been totally ripped. Thankfully the place I have been using for the past 4 years are flaming ace and are well versed in keeping older motors going.

[londonm]

I've had new shite, old shite, Minis modern and classic, Volkswagens, peugeots, and by far the turdiest main service dealer was Phoenix Vauxhall Wimbledon. You could smell the bullshit a mile off, right down to the free AA membership that meant if you broke down the only condition of the offer was they dropped you at the nearest Vauxhall dealer. Gold plated twats.