There is certainly no way that there should be anything like the word ‘trust’ in the name of this particular garage. We’ve had a bit of a stressful week, of which more below…
I originally took our car to Truscotts because we had had an issue with the Anti-Pollution Sensor light coming on. I had had the oxygen sensors replaced by Grant’s Autos, where I normally take my car, but the light continued to come on whenever the car was driven. From what Grant’s Autos had told me and through internet research on the issue I thought that the car needed to by ‘put through’ the Peugeot computer in order for the light to stop coming on. I took the car in to have it put through the computer on Friday the 3rd, and was advised that I could have a ‘waiting appointment’. I was at Truscotts for one hour forty-five minutes approximately at this time and was then told that Grant’s Autos had not changed the car’s ‘Auto Adaptives’ and therefore the car could not be put through the Peugeot computer. I was told that sorting out the Auto Adaptives and then putting the car through the computer to sort of the glitch would be a ‘five minute job’ but that they would need the car to be cool, which would warrant it being left with them overnight.
So… Trusting fools that we are, we booked for Truscotts to have the car overnight from the following Tuesday, October 7th and left the car with them at 17:40. The next day Truscotts rang Chicken to inform him that they had done the computer update and cleared the Auto Adaptives, but that they wanted to keep the car in again over night to ‘test in on a cold engine’. Meanwhile, Chciken and I were both at work and going i na differing times… Nice not having our car.
On the Thursday morning Truscotts again rang Mr C to say that they did not know what sensors Grant’s Autos had replaced and would need more time to run checks on the car, as the light still came on at this time. They said the car would be ready for collection that day. We were unable to collect the car until 17:40 as we both work until 17:30, and when we did we were charged a tidy sum by the customer adviser. However, when we got out to the car the engine would not start. We had never had an issue with the car not starting and were very unhappy with the situation. The adviser asked whether this had been the fault before and on being told no suggested that if we had collected the car early there would have been technicians available, but that he could do nothing about it now as they had all gone home. He refunded the money and said the car would be seen first thing in the morning.
We again had to commute to work at differing times. We both finished at 13:00 on the Friday and went up to Trsuscotts to find out what was happening. The adviser suggested that Truscotts suspected that the oxygen sensors Grant’s Autos had replaced were either faulty or had not been replaced at all. He said that at the time the technicians were running a diagnostic test on the car and he could not give us a time scale for the completion of work, despite the fact that Truscotts had now had our car for three days for a ‘five minute job’ and had caused a serious issue to occur that had not previous, e.g. the car not starting. When we asked for an estimate of the cost he said he didn’t know what it would be until he ‘knew what was wrong’ and said ‘let’s worry about that later’, which seemed a very glib remark in the circumstances. He kept repeating the same things over and over again and giving us no assurances as to time scale or price, both of which were obviously our main concerns.
Truscotts rang us at around 17:30 on Friday October 10th 2008 to say that the issue was a BM34 Unit and that Truscotts could replace this as they had the part, at the cost of another tidy sum. Because we could not move the car from Truscotts due to the failure to start we said to complete this work.
On Saturday 11th October Mr Stacey rang Chris to say that the car was ‘tickety-boo’ and we collect it when we were ready. We collected the car at 12:00 approximately and were charged the tidiest sum we’d seen so far. The adviser made much of the fact his boss had ‘told [him] to charge us for five hours of labour – but I am not doing that’. We were relived to get the car out of Truscotts and when it started we took it home.
As we are going out that afternoon, Mr C went out to the car to check the water and oil levels before our journey, this was around 14:00 on the Saturday, about two hours after we collected the ‘fixed’ car from Truscotts. When he started the engine the Anti-Pollution Fault light came up again. We rang Truscotts immediately to request out money being returned, but the servicing department was closed until Monday.
And so, here on Monday morning I await news of the saga. There is more besides, but this is the jist of my four page letter of complaint, written and ready to go if the need arise.
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