Help cars been at a garage for 4 years!!
Discussion
I'm almost embarrassed to post this and won't name any names. (please don't ask me to, don't want to make it any worse)
I trailered my car to a garage 4 years ago. It needed a new engine block which I supplied.
Work started slow and I was contacted asking for £1300 for machine work that needed to be done and some for parts.
Some months later I had to go collect the block from where it had been sent for the machine work and pay a £900 bill. As the money I paid hadn't been used to pay that bill!
The garage then promised they would complete the work ASAP. I also bought £400 of additional parts to finish the job. This is when I should have given up but I'd paid £1300 and had no work done, a refund wasn't likely. So I trusted the garage and thought they'd keep there promise.
A further amount of time later no work had been done and a mouse had chewed some of my interior!! The garage said they would repair the damage and finish the engine for no additional charge.
Further time passed and nothing. So I started going to the garage on weekends and working on it myself. This went on for sometime.
Then there was a fire at the garage and my nearly complete engine was sprayed with foam. I didn't contact the garage for about 6 months as there was a lot to sort out there.
I visited again months later and found my half rebuilt engine in a sorry state and went mental!! All hands where on deck for a day cleaning it up and over the next week it's was pretty much nearly finished off. But on an engine stand.
Now 7 months later again after phoning every week nothing more has been done.
So after 4 years and £1000s of pounds I have an almost complete engine that needs to go in the car and a chewed interior which hasn't been repaired as promised.
I must admit there has been patches where I havnt phoned for months and months because I was so sick of it and have other things going on too.
What can I do? Feel powerless and stupid for not giving up on them years ago....would move it but it's still spread out in bits and I've paid.
Don't fancy legal action at all, the only people who win are the solicitors.
Any ideas?
I trailered my car to a garage 4 years ago. It needed a new engine block which I supplied.
Work started slow and I was contacted asking for £1300 for machine work that needed to be done and some for parts.
Some months later I had to go collect the block from where it had been sent for the machine work and pay a £900 bill. As the money I paid hadn't been used to pay that bill!
The garage then promised they would complete the work ASAP. I also bought £400 of additional parts to finish the job. This is when I should have given up but I'd paid £1300 and had no work done, a refund wasn't likely. So I trusted the garage and thought they'd keep there promise.
A further amount of time later no work had been done and a mouse had chewed some of my interior!! The garage said they would repair the damage and finish the engine for no additional charge.
Further time passed and nothing. So I started going to the garage on weekends and working on it myself. This went on for sometime.
Then there was a fire at the garage and my nearly complete engine was sprayed with foam. I didn't contact the garage for about 6 months as there was a lot to sort out there.
I visited again months later and found my half rebuilt engine in a sorry state and went mental!! All hands where on deck for a day cleaning it up and over the next week it's was pretty much nearly finished off. But on an engine stand.
Now 7 months later again after phoning every week nothing more has been done.
So after 4 years and £1000s of pounds I have an almost complete engine that needs to go in the car and a chewed interior which hasn't been repaired as promised.
I must admit there has been patches where I havnt phoned for months and months because I was so sick of it and have other things going on too.
What can I do? Feel powerless and stupid for not giving up on them years ago....would move it but it's still spread out in bits and I've paid.
Don't fancy legal action at all, the only people who win are the solicitors.
Any ideas?
meggysaurus said:
Sounds to me like you've been completely ripped off and had your pants pulled down by this garage, contact citizens advice who may be able to advise you further, could always go to a solicitor, I'm sure some of them offer a free 30 min-1hour consultation.
that sounds ridiculous. A lot of people in this world hope a problem will go away if they ignore it.. Some problems do and some problems don't.
Make sure that for the company in question you are the latter. Make sure they know you are not going to be going anywhere until your engine is back in your car with a repaired interior...
If you are confident you are in the right then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Make sure that for the company in question you are the latter. Make sure they know you are not going to be going anywhere until your engine is back in your car with a repaired interior...
If you are confident you are in the right then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
CoolHands said:
meggysaurus said:
Sounds to me like you've been completely ripped off and had your pants pulled down by this garage, contact citizens advice who may be able to advise you further, could always go to a solicitor, I'm sure some of them offer a free 30 min-1hour consultation.
that sounds ridiculous. What is the car and how much is it realistically worth?
Depending on value I'd walk away. You obviously aren't that interested in it. After 4 years sat idle it will most probably need completely refurbing. The engine may be ok, who knows, it's not even in the car. The interior sounds trashed. It sounds like scrap to me. Put this one down to experience and move on.
Unless its a valuable old classic or something?
Depending on value I'd walk away. You obviously aren't that interested in it. After 4 years sat idle it will most probably need completely refurbing. The engine may be ok, who knows, it's not even in the car. The interior sounds trashed. It sounds like scrap to me. Put this one down to experience and move on.
Unless its a valuable old classic or something?
Edited by rufusgti on Thursday 7th February 22:28
meggysaurus said:
CoolHands said:
meggysaurus said:
Sounds to me like you've been completely ripped off and had your pants pulled down by this garage, contact citizens advice who may be able to advise you further, could always go to a solicitor, I'm sure some of them offer a free 30 min-1hour consultation.
that sounds ridiculous. CoolHands said:
cos they will say you owe them £100 a week storage, the cars been in their way for four years and the op was uncooperative. You'll never get any money out of them its a messy situation, so best you can hope is get your car out the place and forget about costs.
At what point has the OP been uncooperative?CoolHands said:
meggysaurus said:
CoolHands said:
meggysaurus said:
Sounds to me like you've been completely ripped off and had your pants pulled down by this garage, contact citizens advice who may be able to advise you further, could always go to a solicitor, I'm sure some of them offer a free 30 min-1hour consultation.
that sounds ridiculous. The car was worth maybe £15k, which is a lot of money to me and would take me perhaps maybe a decade to save. I have cleaned the car regularly, and the body is luckly undamaged and still very good.
New POD said:
Get the car and parts back, list what it will cost to put it back to where it was 4 years ago, and send then a letter asking for the cash. 28 days later go to small claims and see them in court.
Or put head in sand.
That sounds a good idea, although it actually going to court is scary. I could end up spending as much on legal fees as the cars worth.....Or put head in sand.
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