Worried mechanics are ripping you off? LBC’s consumer expert Dean Dunham weighs in
Caller Rose has been having some issues with her car, and she suspects she’s being taken for a ride. LBC’s Consumer Expert Dean Dunham uses Section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act to point her in the right direction.
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Rose, from Edinburgh, has been having “a bit of a nightmare with the garage” ever since her car broke down at the end of the Easter holidays.
After it was taken to a nearby garage – the nearest approved garage working with the company that towed the car – the car was supposedly fixed.
But Rose says she immediately knew the car was, in fact, not okay, and decided to take it back to the garage.
After the garage carried out another repair – and Rose has paid it around £2,000 – the car broke down yet again.
“I took it back again,” Rose said. “They had it for over two weeks. Then I got it back two days later. Then I broke down on the worst part of the motorway in Glasgow.”
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The car had to be towed again in what was quickly turning into, in her own words, “a rigmarole,” as it was the same issue every time the car broke down.
Rose said she had to justify to the person from the RAC, the insurance provider, that she had actually been to the garage to still qualify for the breakdown rescue.
“At that point. The person from the RAC, he spent a bit longer, which he had to justify to his boss, but he essentially found that there was simply a wire that was faulty… and the garage hadn't picked this up at all.”
Mr Dunham asked: “Oh, so all that. So, Rose, all that work they had done for – think you said £2,000 – are you telling me that was unnecessary?”
After speaking to a number of people – including a neighbour who is a car mechanic – Rose felt it might well have been.
“So basically I've paid about £2,000 to this garage. They've never actually fixed a fault. In the end it was the RAC. And in the meantime I've had about six weeks of upheaval with travel costs, having to hire a car to get to my work, which is a bit of a drive away, lots of stress, et cetera, et cetera.”
Rose said she emailed the garage and asked for a full refund, because of potentially unnecessary repairs. The garage refused, but said she could bring the car in for another repair.
When Rose told them this wasn’t necessary as the RAC had fixed the problem, they replied: “Matter resolved then.”
Mr Dunham began to collect evidence, asking if she had any proof of the RAC fixing the faulty wire, which would “substantiate your position that the problem with this car was not what they fixed for £2,000.”
“Because that did not resolve the issue, it was in fact the wire,” he added. “And of course with a national, well-known brand saying it, that's going to be good, powerful evidence and armed with that evidence – and get it first – go back to this garage and say under the Consumer Rights act, you should have carried out this service with reasonable care and skill.
“Let's put a section to this. It's section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act. Always good to cite the actual law. So it's good to write that down, Rose, on this occasion and say to them, the reason why you failed in that respect was because if you had taken reasonable care and skill, you would have identified the problem, which was not what you charged me £2,000 for.
“It was actually something else that you did not fix, therefore you clearly breached it. And I've got evidence. It's this RAC report. Now what you'll be saying then is because of all this, you want your money back.”
Rose said she had emailed the garage along similar lines, citing the Consumer Act 2015, but hasn’t heard back.
“Well, Rose, your next step then would be to go down the credit card route. You've correctly identified the issue that you've not done that. You could go back to this third party company where you got the payment assist plan and tell them, see what they say,” Mr Dunham said.
He added that, if the credit card company hadn’t paid the full amount to the garage yet, they could stop sending the payments. If they had, they could assist Rose in getting in touch with the garage in question.
“But your next step really is going to be to say, I'm going to take you to court, you've breached the Consumer Rights Act, I've got evidence,” He said. “And armed with the evidence that hopefully you're going to have of that RAC report, they will be crazy not to give your money back.
“Because in my view, if it's exactly as you've told me, I can't see any outcome other than a court saying, ‘Rose, you're right, we're going to give you a judgement in your favour.’”