Garages - are they all just a bit crap?
Discussion
I don't think I've ever found a garage to work on my cars that I'm 100% happy with. Recent woes in no particular order, and not naming/shaming:
Garage 1
Been around for years, recommended ages ago by a friend who knows the owner. Nice lads, seem honest enough but:
Another local independent outfit, highly recommended by the world and his dog on facebook (admittedly not necessarily car people) and been around years; always booked solid. Got them to replace a binding rear caliper on the Golf. When I got it back the brake pedal was pretty much hitting the floor, obviously hadn't been bled properly. Took it back and they did rebleed which improved it slightly (not before trying to sell me a full fluid change for another £50, which I declined). Just gone to look at the fluid myself and notice they've put a huge crack in the plastic engine cover/air filter housing when trying to get to the reservoir
Garage 3
Local(ish) performance marque specialist, did an otherwise great job on my pride & joy but I'm pretty sure they didn't put the seats back in properly (wrong bolts in driver/passenger side and slide stops in the wrong side). Also the roof was not clipped down properly after being refitted. Didn't say anything as can't 100% prove it was them.
Am I being too fussy? Is it too much to expect professional mechanics to treat a car with the same care I would my own? I try to do more and more jobs myself but sometimes just want to pay someone with a ramp and proper tools an hour's labour to save me faffing about all weekend trying to DIY. I know some of these seem like minor gripes, but makes you wonder what else they're not doing properly.
/rant ... cool story, bro, etc.
Garage 1
Been around for years, recommended ages ago by a friend who knows the owner. Nice lads, seem honest enough but:
- After doing some welding on the sills on my Golf, undersealed over it which then spattered up the paintwork and wheeltrims (which were new), pretty much impossible to clean off. Not really worth complaining.
- They then replaced a knackered damper on the missus' Honda, I noticed a week or so later they had left all the plastic trim in the engine bay loose so we had to make a trip back and get them to refit all the clips and a big piece of the intake resonator which was still sitting in the guy's toolbox. (Missus gave them a b
king, she's much better at it than me). Won't be going back I don't think.
Another local independent outfit, highly recommended by the world and his dog on facebook (admittedly not necessarily car people) and been around years; always booked solid. Got them to replace a binding rear caliper on the Golf. When I got it back the brake pedal was pretty much hitting the floor, obviously hadn't been bled properly. Took it back and they did rebleed which improved it slightly (not before trying to sell me a full fluid change for another £50, which I declined). Just gone to look at the fluid myself and notice they've put a huge crack in the plastic engine cover/air filter housing when trying to get to the reservoir
Garage 3
Local(ish) performance marque specialist, did an otherwise great job on my pride & joy but I'm pretty sure they didn't put the seats back in properly (wrong bolts in driver/passenger side and slide stops in the wrong side). Also the roof was not clipped down properly after being refitted. Didn't say anything as can't 100% prove it was them.
Am I being too fussy? Is it too much to expect professional mechanics to treat a car with the same care I would my own? I try to do more and more jobs myself but sometimes just want to pay someone with a ramp and proper tools an hour's labour to save me faffing about all weekend trying to DIY. I know some of these seem like minor gripes, but makes you wonder what else they're not doing properly.
/rant ... cool story, bro, etc.
fridaypassion said:
Garage owner here well former!
It's a lose lose really anything to do with spannering. I have a moderately successful business established for 10 years doing sales/parts. 4 Years ago in my infinite wisdom I decided to open our doors to outside service work. I won't say I regret it as in a way it was valuable life experience but NEVER AGAIN!
We did 3.5 years at it. I think we did a good job (I think OP was one of our customer actually - we didnt have his seat out though!) but it was very hard. For a bit of context this is highly specialised (Lotus) not fast paced in and out type suff. We are/were honest worked hard to please people and were very (too)reasonable with our pricing. In the main it was OK but the difficulties just in organising everything. There's a lot to know and we only did single marque. The reasons I gave it up were primarily that the hassle to reward ratio was nowhere near where I needed to be. We didn't need the small additional income as such and it was so busy it had started to impact other (better) areas of what we do.
Unfortunately we did also have just a handful of shall I say difficult customers that really took the shine off what could often have been a good bit of toil on a car and bending over backwards/coming in Sundays etc. People really don't like spending on their cars even "pride and joy" cars. We would sometimes invest quite a bit of time in locating a fault or doing a service and finding some preventative maintenance doing but came to the conclusion that people in the main aren't really arsed and just wanted a stamp in the book.
The biggie was always those words I heard probably maybe only 2/3 times but buy oh boy did it absolutely boil my urine "That mark wasn't on it when I brought it in" Honestly if I had heard that once more I would have had a heart attack on the spot! In our unit all the cars are kept inside with full walk space around them and no chance of anything hitting an alloy or marking paint or anything. We did far more for people in that regard than any Franchise dealer could I think there's a scrutiny that goes on after your car has been in somewhere and you can pick up on odd marks that you simply didn't see before. 5% of supposed damage I reckon might be genuine. I think there's a problem that people think they have received a good service level if the bill was small. If they have had to spend all of a sudden there was a clip missing or some other small niggle point is latched upon.
There certainly are good garages out there. In 20 years of messing about with cars and 10 in the trade I can sniff a bullstter 100 yards away. We have a good little network built up to do most jobs now. It is tough as very often the latest "hot" specialist can get a bit of a good rep based from a single forum post but can actually be pretty poor. We found this a good few times.
Obviously bigger franchise places you'll be very hard pressed to find any that are run properly.
It's a tough job anyway. The guys on the spanners are lucky to earn 20-30k at a max doing a tough job. It's an awful existence in winter too! - service managers are stressed/overworked. You wouldn't want their job and bear in mind when you visit your friendly local garage that their job I can pretty much guarantee you is harder that what you do to make your money. If things are that bad....You do it!
Fair comments. I was indeed a customer and certainly no complaints - was gutted when you stopped doing outside service work! I think it's telling that the service side just wasn't worthwhile for someone in your position (i.e. sales side helping with overheads). Maybe this is the problem, the decent outfits realise there's no value in taking the time to do a good job and so disappear, then it's a race to the bottom on price for the rest.It's a lose lose really anything to do with spannering. I have a moderately successful business established for 10 years doing sales/parts. 4 Years ago in my infinite wisdom I decided to open our doors to outside service work. I won't say I regret it as in a way it was valuable life experience but NEVER AGAIN!
We did 3.5 years at it. I think we did a good job (I think OP was one of our customer actually - we didnt have his seat out though!) but it was very hard. For a bit of context this is highly specialised (Lotus) not fast paced in and out type suff. We are/were honest worked hard to please people and were very (too)reasonable with our pricing. In the main it was OK but the difficulties just in organising everything. There's a lot to know and we only did single marque. The reasons I gave it up were primarily that the hassle to reward ratio was nowhere near where I needed to be. We didn't need the small additional income as such and it was so busy it had started to impact other (better) areas of what we do.
Unfortunately we did also have just a handful of shall I say difficult customers that really took the shine off what could often have been a good bit of toil on a car and bending over backwards/coming in Sundays etc. People really don't like spending on their cars even "pride and joy" cars. We would sometimes invest quite a bit of time in locating a fault or doing a service and finding some preventative maintenance doing but came to the conclusion that people in the main aren't really arsed and just wanted a stamp in the book.
The biggie was always those words I heard probably maybe only 2/3 times but buy oh boy did it absolutely boil my urine "That mark wasn't on it when I brought it in" Honestly if I had heard that once more I would have had a heart attack on the spot! In our unit all the cars are kept inside with full walk space around them and no chance of anything hitting an alloy or marking paint or anything. We did far more for people in that regard than any Franchise dealer could I think there's a scrutiny that goes on after your car has been in somewhere and you can pick up on odd marks that you simply didn't see before. 5% of supposed damage I reckon might be genuine. I think there's a problem that people think they have received a good service level if the bill was small. If they have had to spend all of a sudden there was a clip missing or some other small niggle point is latched upon.
There certainly are good garages out there. In 20 years of messing about with cars and 10 in the trade I can sniff a bulls
tter 100 yards away. We have a good little network built up to do most jobs now. It is tough as very often the latest "hot" specialist can get a bit of a good rep based from a single forum post but can actually be pretty poor. We found this a good few times. Obviously bigger franchise places you'll be very hard pressed to find any that are run properly.
It's a tough job anyway. The guys on the spanners are lucky to earn 20-30k at a max doing a tough job. It's an awful existence in winter too! - service managers are stressed/overworked. You wouldn't want their job and bear in mind when you visit your friendly local garage that their job I can pretty much guarantee you is harder that what you do to make your money. If things are that bad....You do it!
My rant was mainly based on recent experiences with generic outfits that have ballsed up basic tasks - admittedly I've used them based on convenience and price - and tinged with historical bad experience with other specialists. My thread title in hindsight seems a bit inflammatory, so apologies for that.
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