I really really hate motor mechanics

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 21:10

Obviously this is just my opinion and others may have a different opinion but I really really hate motor mechanics.

In my experience the majority of motor mechanics are either incompetent and or lazy

I have a Nissan Leaf and last year I had a problem where I was getting a noise like a flat tyre which went away when I stopped. I suspected that there was an issue with the parking brake where it was sticking on and rubbing creating friction and heat. The rear brake on one side of the car got really hot to the touch even after mild driving. The Nissan Leaf uses drum brakes for the parking brakes.

So I took it into a local garage to see if they could fix the problem. They tightened up the parking brake cable which didn't fix it. So I took it to a second garage. They took a look at the car and told me they could see nothing wrong. The problem persisted so I took it to a third garage. They too could see nothing wrong but told me to bring the car right back if the problem showed itself again. I took the car for a 5 mile drive and the problem came back so I took it straight back to the garage. They booked the car in for the next day and I dropped it in first thing in the morning. I used the LEAF's mobile app to check to see if the car had been driven and by 4PM it hadn't even moved. I got a phone call at about 6PM to say it was ready to collect. When I picked it up the owner told me they have tried to fix it and they have improved it but the brake disc still gets a bit hot. Needless to say I wasn't overly impressed with this. I drove about 2 miles and by the time I stopped the brake disc was really hot again.

I decided to phone around other garages to see if I could get an appointment in the next few days and I was quite shocked to find a lot of garages were unable / unwilling to work on EV's even though the problem was with the brakes. My only option at the time was to take it back to the last garage. I suggested to them that the fault could be something to do with the drum brakes on the car. I was told the car didn't have drum brakes! Needless to say the third attempt at a fix was unsuccessful. I was pretty fuming by this point.

I phoned around once again and managed to find a fourth garage to take a look at it. A couple of hours after dropping the car off at the garage I got a phone call telling me they had found the parking brake cable had seized. Finally a competent garage. Only downside was a new parking brake cable was £450 for the parts and labour. Problem solved at least.

The Nissan Dealerships are utterly useless

So after discovering that cheap parts on most other cars could be very expensive to get fixed on the LEAF, I decided to investigate getting a warranty on the LEAF. It just so happened that Nissan offered such a warranty called Good To Go.
I phoned up Nissan and the person I spoke to told me the Manager had to go home early due to the snow so they would call me back on Monday. The manager was the only person who was trained on the Good To Go package apparently. Fair enough I thought.

Monday arrives and I haven't had a callback by lunchtime so I phone them again. The manager is on another phone call and I was told that she would call me back after she was available. This was at about 1PM. No callback received that day.

So I phoned back the next day and finally get put through to the manager in question Sarah. Turns out that she is in fact not trained in the new package and that she is calling Nissan to find out how to set it up. She tells me that she will call me back when she finds out more.

I decided to call another Nissan Dealership. I phoned the Stirling branch of Nissan Western. First phone call rang out. Second phone call the lady told me no one was available to set up the package for me.

I then tried Nissan Western Edinburgh, same story. "No one is available to set it up for you, would you like a call back?"

I tried Glasgow Macklin Motors Nissan Dealership. The woman took my details and transferred me to another department. The other department sent me straight to voicemail because they weren't open yet.

Barnetts Dundee Nissan Dealership. Got through to a man who seemed to know about the Good To Go package. Took my details and I asked him if me signing up to the package at Barnetts Dundee would allow me to use any dealership for servicing or warranty claims and he didn't know. He told me he would go and ask for me, put me on hold and then seemed to transfer me to a number that just rang for two minutes and no one picked up.

5 different Nissan Dealerships who all in their own way failed to take my money when I am stood in front of them with my wallet open saying please take my money. Total incompetence.

If this was how difficult it was to actually give Nissan money, how difficult would it be to ever claim on the warranty? I decided I didn't want to find out.

I ended up signing up for a third party warranty after doing loads of research into it.

Garages and Emails

I am one of those people who prefers to use email or other digital communication methods to talk to people I don't know. I love live chat.

I have a minor service due on the LEAF and my contract with the third party warranty requires me to take it to a VAT registered garage. All that the LEAF requires in a minor service is an inspection and the cabin air filter replaced. I could have just done the filter myself but I need a garage to do it for me for the warranty.

So I would really like to get a few quotes for a minor service to see if any independent garages would have a better price than the £159 Nissan want which I thought was a bit pricey considering it is just an inspection and a new filter. Less than an hours work and a £10 filter.

As I said I prefer to use digital communication so emailed the following to about 10 garages:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

I am looking to have my Nissan Leaf serviced. It is due a minor service this year.

Could you please provide me with a quote for the following work:

Replacement of air conditioner filter

Inspection of brake Pads, rotors and other brake components

Inspection of headlamp aiming

Inspection of brake system and fluid

Inspection of reduction gear oil

Inspection of foot brake (For free play, stroke and operation)

Inspection of parking brake (for operation)

Inspection of charging port

Inspection of cooling system

Thanks,

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pretty concise and polite I thought. First thing I noticed was that most garages don't have any way to contact them other than by telephone. Bit weird considering it is 2022 but OK. So of the 10 emails I sent out I got one reply. This was the reply I got:

"thanks for messaging, can I just confirm your not looking to get an oil change done in this service?"

Dear oh dear oh dear.

I decided I would just bite the bullet and phone up the garage that fixed the parking brake cable. The guy I spoke to said he would get a quote made up for me. That was two days ago with no reply so far.

Look's like I will just have to book it into Nissan. But why do garages have websites with email addresses if they don't want to use email to communicate? If they want to only deal with phone calls they should just ditch the website surely?

Anyway, I was curious as to why motor mechanics don't like to use email or other digital communication so went to the mechanics sub reddit. This was a mistake.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

So what's going on? Why is getting anything done to your car so difficult. I don't think there is any other industry that is quite so anti customer. I feel that in all my dealings with garages I have been very polite and undemanding. Even when I have felt like the garage has been lazy / incompetent I have never expressed that opinion to them and have always kept my cool and not once become a Karen. I just go on the internet and moan about it like right now!

Diddums · 21 Jul 2022 at 21:24

I never knew it was possible to read in a Laurel & Hardy theme yet here we are.

Stop messing about and take it to Nissan, the extra cash will be worth your faffing and frustration.

dave28 · 21 Jul 2022 at 21:30

parking break cable labour and fitting £450, what on earth is that about.

For £440 i had my car MOT`d, both front discs and pads and calipers and both rear break shoes fitted. And a rotted front subframe removed and fitted, and all my coolent changed.
Ok i supplied the discs, pads and subframe but they supplied the £170 calipers set and the coolant and break fluid.

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 21:51

dave28 said:
parking break cable labour and fitting £450, what on earth is that about.

For £440 i had my car MOT`d, both front discs and pads and calipers and both rear break shoes fitted. And a rotted front subframe removed and fitted, and all my coolent changed.
Ok i supplied the discs, pads and subframe but they supplied the £170 calipers set and the coolant and break fluid.

It was a rip off for sure but only Nissan make the parking brake cables. That is why I got a warranty. If the PTC heater in the car breaks, that's over £1000 please. There are quite a few components that could break in the LEAF that will cost north of £1000 to fix, some over £3500. I only paid £8500 for the car!

Diddums said:
I never knew it was possible to read in a Laurel & Hardy theme yet here we are.

Stop messing about and take it to Nissan, the extra cash will be worth your faffing and frustration.

Yes I have discovered that the hard way. Everyone is always telling me to avoid taking the car to the dealers because you will get ripped off. I willing to pay a little bit more, to get it serviced anyway, in order to avoid having to deal with independent garages who seem to have some sort of aversion to EV's.

teenwolf · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:01

I scrolled down and down and down and realised I had wasted time in my life.

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:02

teenwolf said:
I scrolled down and down and down and realised I had wasted time in my life.

And yet you wasted more time replying!

radderfire · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:02

If you find a few local garages are struggling with a fix, it's best to take it to the dealer because they will have specialist knowledge about their own brand cars and will probably have seen the particular problem before.

e-mail is not a great way to communicate with businesses, because there are variable standards to answering e-mails, you are better off using the phone, that's what they focus on.

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:06

radderfire said:
If you find a few local garages are struggling with a fix, it's best to take it to the dealer because they will have specialist knowledge about their own brand cars and will probably have seen the particular problem before.

e-mail is not a great way to communicate with businesses, because there are variable standards to answering e-mails, you are better off using the phone, that's what they focus on.

Yes I have discovered that. Email and the motor industry don't mix. I know now not to even bother in the future.

radderfire · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:25

Just to say also, my guess is the reason many won't work on electric vehicles is because they require specialist training, and they can be dangerous to work on if you haven't had training, and they could also do a lot of expensive damage to the vehicle.

At the end of the day, complex procedures such as servicing a car are not suited to e-mail correspondence, it's not the way garages work. Unfortunately, you are going to have to adapt how you communicate to the way garages communicate best. This means having an initial phone call to get a rough idea if they can help you or not, and then leaving the vehicle with them for them to assess it. You could ask them to inspect first and then quote, I think most would do this. Re choosing the right garage, then you need to make the assessment whether to take to a local or the dealership, and it's here where asking for advice and recommendations will help you - and you can do this on the computer via forums!! Obviously you can ask on our own motors subforum and a lot of car brands have enthusiast forums as well.

I can understand why someone might be interested in a warranty, but my experience has always been there is too much fine print and the insurance company gets out of it, so I would rather take the chance with repair bills.

I am sure that Nissan UK would not be happy to hear about your customer experience, but if you communicate with them via their preferred methods I think you will get better results.

tom_nieto · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:27

Both the Porsche and Fiat independent garages that I use are excellent on email.

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:42

radderfire said:
Just to say also, my guess is the reason many won't work on electric vehicles is because they require specialist training, and they can be dangerous to work on if you haven't had training, and they could also do a lot of expensive damage to the vehicle.

At the end of the day, complex procedures such as servicing a car are not suited to e-mail correspondence, it's not the way garages work. Unfortunately, you are going to have to adapt how you communicate to the way garages communicate best. This means having an initial phone call to get a rough idea if they can help you or not, and then leaving the vehicle with them for them to assess it. You could ask them to inspect first and then quote, I think most would do this. Re choosing the right garage, then you need to make the assessment whether to take to a local or the dealership, and it's here where asking for advice and recommendations will help you - and you can do this on the computer via forums!! Obviously you can ask on our own motors subforum and a lot of car brands have enthusiast forums as well.

I can understand why someone might be interested in a warranty, but my experience has always been there is too much fine print and the insurance company gets out of it, so I would rather take the chance with repair bills.

I am sure that Nissan UK would not be happy to hear about your customer experience, but if you communicate with them via their preferred methods I think you will get better results.

Some of the garages that said they wouldn't work on EV's did say that it was because they weren't trained on them and wouldn't be insured. Fair enough I suppose. There are still millions of ICE cars for them to work on so they aren't really losing much custom, yet...

From now on I am just going to use Nissan for the servicing because I can't be bothered dealing with independent garages. There is no consistency with independents. At least with dealerships they have set procedure's they follow. In theory one dealership should do the exact same work as another. You can also just go to their website and book a service appointment. You don't need to ask for a quote because they already list the price and what you get for it. You get to drop your car off and drink tea or coffee in a modern, clean building whilst you wait.

Call me misanthrope, but I want the least possible interaction possible whilst having to get my car serviced. It is just a major inconvenience to me and I just want in and out with as quickly as possible.

The very slightly cheaper prices independent garages offer is just not worth the extra hassle to me.

Begbie · 21 Jul 2022 at 22:49

Unless a dealership, with an adminer most garages are still very old school and won't even look at emails. The work is available and they'll take work that comes in via a phone call before an email.

jpaul · 21 Jul 2022 at 23:17

well yes - why should garages waste time on emails that have been potentially copy/pasted to several dealers .. use the hybrid approach ring them first and follow up with an email.
(if I want to negotiate with sky or car insurance company for a renewal you have to speak to a human - online chat/email will give zero benefit)

Is the desire to get a warranty a corollary of (exhorbitant) parking brake type expense ? will warranty company want to know about previous issues.

lovelyhead · 21 Jul 2022 at 23:44

jpaul said:
well yes - why should garages waste time on emails that have been potentially copy/pasted to several dealers .. use the hybrid approach ring them first and follow up with an email.
(if I want to negotiate with sky or car insurance company for a renewal you have to speak to a human - online chat/email will give zero benefit)

Is the desire to get a warranty a corollary of (exhorbitant) parking brake type expense ? will warranty company want to know about previous issues.

I get that garages would rather deal with phone calls rather than emails but why do they have a website with a contact us page if they don't want to deal with it?

I use live chat all the time to negotiate renewals and the like and I love it. It is the best way to deal with customer service in my opinion.

In regard to the warranty, yes I got it to give me peace of mind that if any of the expensive components breaks I won't have to fork up potentially thousands to have it fixed. I also won't have to find someone to fix it which is just as big an issue as the expense as the warranty company has a list of approved garages they deal with. I made sure to ask the warranty company if all the big ticket items were covered and they confirmed that they were. Everything except the battery pack but no third party warranty covers that. I also did it all through live chat and email. A very pleasant experience which means I have it all in writing which I might not have done if it had been done over the phone.

Rroff · 22 Jul 2022 at 00:56

Pretty much my experience with 90% of garages out there sadly - including many main dealers, etc.

Fortunately the Nissan dealer near me is pretty decent and for the most part not too terrible price wise as dealers go, aside from some stuff like windscreen wiper changes where they charge the earth (but I do that myself). They are about the only vehicle related place which ever phones me back if they say they are going to.

kkelly · 22 Jul 2022 at 09:02

When we had our leaf Parks East Kilbride done all the work on it for three years no problems

tom_e · 22 Jul 2022 at 09:14

Unfortunately it's one of those things where it's very easy for them to be lazy and not do what you've paid for because very few people will be checking whether things like filters and plugs have been replaced or because they can say they spent a couple of hours on diagnosis say "No idea mate" and then still charge for time spent or replace something on the proviso of "It could be this" then when it isn't well you've had the labour and parts so it's still chargeable thanks.

Slackworth · 22 Jul 2022 at 09:31

radderfire said:
Just to say also, my guess is the reason many won't work on electric vehicles is because they require specialist training, and they can be dangerous to work on if you haven't had training, and they could also do a lot of expensive damage to the vehicle.

Not only this but the equipment needed too - it's different for each manufacturer and woefully expensive. The BMW EOS tester for example if doing any work on the HV system is £10K + VAT :eek:

Without having the code from the EOS tester being inputted to ISTA to clear the errors, the car won't run! For a small indie, I have no idea long term how this is going to work - they can't have the relevant equipment for every brand - assuming the costs are similar for Kia, Nissan, Merc etc., you're talking several hundreds of thousands of pounds! I guess someone like Bosch will have a uniform system that can operate multiple manufacturers but see this being several years away before these systems are opened up.

Where indies are concerned though, I have to agree they seem to be getting worse. I partly believe this is down to a number of reasons:
- Recovery of earnings lost during Covid
- Less new cars sold and people making used cars last longer so they have ability to generate more jobs & revenue
- Older (and dare I say it harder working) generation handing down businesses - definitely have recent experience of this - a family owned garage both my in-laws and us have used in the past with exceptional service and good prices has recently been passed down to his son from his father - the prices have sky rocketed to the point he's almost no different to the main dealers on "value servicing", he's employed a receptionist who quite frankly is useless and I would actually say the service has become worse.

sovietspybob · 22 Jul 2022 at 09:36

lovelyhead said:
From now on I am just going to use Nissan for the servicing because I can't be bothered dealing with independent garages. There is no consistency with independents. At least with dealerships they have set procedure's they follow. In theory one dealership should do the exact same work as another.

yeah that's never been my experience, Toyota dealer didn't service car when it was bought and a service included in the price and then when it was taken back for them to do it they lost all the service history...

Then a Mazda dealer fitted the wrong spark plugs to our MX5 and despite taking it back 2 times for investigation as to why it was running like garbage they couldn't fix it, i took a punt and changed them myself which is when i found the wrong part had been used...

Suzuki dealer couldn't diagnose a noise from the rear of our newly purchased 3 year old swift sport after 3 visits, turns out the back pads were down to the metal on a car which had just had a full service and pre sale inspection supposedly..

Maybe i've been unlucky but Jesus wept it's hard to find anyone even remotely competent in the car industry. That's why i do pretty much everything myself nowadays i've got no faith in anyone else.

mid_gen · 22 Jul 2022 at 10:07

This is why I won't buy a 'cheap' EV. It's going to take a good few years for there to be a worthwhile selection of competent independent garages to look after them.

Either pony up for dealer servicing, or stick to ICE imo.