Has a garage ever damaged your car? what was the outcome?

[MonkeyKnifeFight]

I went to national tyres & auto care last week to have 2 front tyres put on and one of the machines has chewed 4 marks around each of the front wheels, its gauged through the paint and indented into the alloy, the kind of mark you would create if you hit a hammer on a screwdriver kinda thing.

Phoned them up today he said pop down, i showed him the marks and he said they are normal!! i told him they werent normal and he offered me a £10 credit note as he doesnt feel he is liable.

So basically what he's offered me didnt even cover the cost of going to complain let alone go anyway to fixing the issue.

What would your next steps be?

Small claims court?

 

[AK]

Was that the manager you spoke to?

 

[ilovewilly]

You need to prove he did it at that time, and not you when you drove home, or back to complain.

Take the £10, don't go there again.

 

[Sir_Dave]

I has this issue with a national tyre fitting place once, their machine went straight through the lacquer on one of my freshly refurbed & highly expensive BBS split rims. Naturally i wasnt best pleased.

Luckily for me, i had taken photos of the wheels that morning with a time/date stamp (as i always do), one letter to head office & a refurb was duely paid for.

 

[Tombo]

I has this issue with a national tyre fitting place once, their machine went straight through the lacquer on one of my freshly refurbed & highly expensive BBS split rims. Naturally i wasnt best pleased.

Luckily for me, i had taken photos of the wheels that morning with a time/date stamp (as i always do), one letter to head office & a refurb was duely paid for.

good idea to take pictures, i will bare that in mind when i get tyres done next time.

 

[MonkeyKnifeFight]

I has this issue with a national tyre fitting place once, their machine went straight through the lacquer on one of my freshly refurbed & highly expensive BBS split rims. Naturally i wasnt best pleased.

Luckily for me, i had taken photos of the wheels that morning with a time/date stamp (as i always do), one letter to head office & a refurb was duely paid for.

This is intriguing, i will try taking some pictures and sending them to their head office before thinking about small claims.

Was that the manager you spoke to?

Yes it was a director i spoke to!!

You need to prove he did it at that time, and not you when you drove home, or back to complain.

Take the £10, don't go there again.

He showed me the machine that did the damage and talked me through how it would have happened, he didnt even try to get out of the fact that they had damaged the wheels he just felt he didnt need to fix the damage done.

Its a £10 credit voucher so its worth f*ck all to me.

 

[Sir_Dave]

This is intriguing, i will try taking some pictures and sending them to their head office before thinking about small claims.

You need date stamped before AND after photos though.

 

[fUbAr]

Mine's in there at the moment, so I hope not!

The Audi woman walked round my car and wrote down any damage when I dropped it off though.

 

[Curtis!]

The Audi woman walked round my car and wrote down any damage when I dropped it off though.

Any decent place will take a full visual check of any scratches, dinks or chips on glass etc before any work is done. Take a note of mileage etc.

 

[Collister]

your wasting your time argueing it they will just say prove it was us. you have got to expect this it happens pretty much every tyre place

 

[montana]

I like to stand and watch and i can pick up anything like this straight away.....I have had this before when a garage jacked an old car of mine and rippled the floor, if i hadnt noticed they would have just denied it....its reasons like this i service and maintain my car myself as much as i can and keep it away from garages, however in your situation there was no alternative.

For future reference there are some alloy places that have machines which can take the tyres off without touching the alloy at all, meaning zero damage.

 

[Sir_Dave]

Mine's in there at the moment, so I hope not!

The Audi woman walked round my car and wrote down any damage when I dropped it off though.

I hope you told them not to clean it!! The Polish swirling freshly pc'd paint is not cool (from experience).

 

[Vicky.]

A £10 credit is poor considering they admit to causing the damage and they should know how much it costs to repair a wheel so are aware it won't be cheap for you. I'd write them a letter and then go from their response, at least you'd have it in writing that they admit liability (if they do).

I had a similar issue, went for wheel refurb they didn't put the wheel on right a scored lines in the back and then left my wheel nuts undone. I felt the car was driving strange, took it back they said it was fine and I disagreed. Halfway home my dad Starts going crazy with the horn In his car behind me and telling me to stop, the wheel
was wobbling so bad that it was seconds away from falling off. They gave me a full refund in the end of £200.

 

[MonkeyKnifeFight]

^^^ £10 is a joke, i wasnt really that annoyed to begin with but after listening to him going on about hows its normal and it doesnt matter i was well f*cked off.

I'll speak to citizens advise bureau and see where i stand.

 

[Sarah]

see what citizens advice say, but i dont think u will get anywhere with your claim as if you do end up in the small claims court, it will be down to proving that the garage did the damage to get them to pay for the refurb

 

[rogueneo]

Reg vardy damaged my car and they resprayed the car for me for free and rebuilt the back end , plus i got a service out of it and a wing mirror which i broke of putting back on for free. Threaten them hard and dont back down you will win.

 

[Budgie]

Reg vardy damaged my car and they resprayed the car for me for free and rebuilt the back end , plus i got a service out of it and a wing mirror which i broke of putting back on for free. Threaten them hard and dont back down you will win.

There must have been literally no way they could claim it wasn't them.

IMO, if you accept the wheels back in that condition, and hand over any money, you've got no leg to stand on..

 

[R20 CWH]

Arnold Shark damaged my dash when investigating a rattle behind the central console. They attempted to deny it at first, however I had recently cleaned the car which had been date stamped and had a few snaps of the interior, which had no damage.

After some phone calls they agreed to replace two damaged panels on the car, at the hazard light switch and the missing cap for the tow hook piece on the passenger side well. They had treied to get away with it, but I saw a gulity look on the technician who carried out the work.

 

[Harpham]

Doesnt the £10 credit note kind of say they are accepting that they damaged the wheels??

If they knew that they didnt damage anything, then why would they give you anything?!

 

[MonkeyKnifeFight]

^^^ this is a good point

 

[H182]

Costco damaged one of my wheels, didn't notice till I washed it a few days later. Took it back and showed the manager, he said I can't see how its been done by our machine, but due to the shape of the mark and the rest of the wheel being perfect, we'll honour it.

Got it repaired and sent them the bill, suppose I was lucky.

 

[Gorms]

My mate kicked off about a simular thing and got his wheel refurbed for free.

I have an on going thing with a VW body shop who did some 3rd party warrenty work on my car and made a mess of things. Waiting on a phone call from the body shop manager to find out how he thinks painting over issues is a way to solve them. Cant understand why it has taken him 3 weeks to call me.

Paul

 

[Tunst]

not my car but my ex's she took hers to quick fit and it came back with marks on the bumper like it had hit a wall, they tried to deny it but she took pics before and managed to get a bumper respray outa them.


I had a customer in a few weeks ago, dropped his car off with me and left it for a week as his cambelt snapped i noticed some scratches on the rear quarter, usually id take a picture of damage to keep my arse in the clear but didnt on this occasion, he came back a week later and started complaining about these scratches, i didnt really have a leg to stand so ended up having to pay out for a rear qtr respray

 

[Leeshez]

Arnold Shark at Wigan scratched my clio when it was about 2 weeks old. It had been in there garage for about a week because the car rained in. When i got it home the rear 1/4 pannel near the fuel cap was scratched. After a few phone calls they repaired it.

 

[Liam]

Halifax Renault once damaged my new 182 wheel despite me asking them not to and them prommising me it would not be on their "special machine". Manager was very sorry to be eating his words.

 

[Benny06]

If they've admitted it, which they have done by giving you a £10 voucher, then do you not have them on the back foot?

Surely if it wasn't their fault they wouldn't give you bugger all so if you take it to small claims court you could argue that '£10 credit' doesn't cover the damages.

Not a particulary strong case. Could always see where a solicitors letter gets you? They might just cough up, might not though!