Advice: Should I Pay twice?

[~J~]

Hopefully this is a dead-easy one to answer, but never experienced it before so a little in the dark for me.

My wife had took her car to be fixed the other day. One of the lights on the dashboard came on indicating something wrong (don't ask me what, I don't drive so don't know).

Took it to the mechanic down the road, bloke who has a big yard and is the village mechanic who thought it might be something to do with the emmisions but didn't have the diagnostics hardware to give a proper fault finder and would need to take it into the local town.

Fair enough.

Car came back on Friday, local mechanic said the diagnostics had found the fault, it was the emissions sensor that was faulty, had replaced it, re-run the diagnostics and no faults found and the light had gone out. He'd driven the car for about 5-6 mile so make sure, all ok.

Saturday morning, wife and I went out, light came back on. Then went out. Then came back on again and has remained on ever since.

Now I've rung him up and he wants the car again and has said the following points:

1) He may not had installed it correctly
2) It could be because the part is new and may be a bit tempermental
3) If the above isn't true, he'll need to take it back to be re-diagnosed.

Now point 1 I understand

Point 2, I'm having trouble believing in this day in age that parts can be 'tempermental', I just can't get out of my head that something should work or it doesn't.

And point 3, if he needs to take it to be re-dianosed, have I every right to refuse to pay another diagnostics fee (£32 + VAT)?

Any advice?

 

[uber soldat]

Hopefully this is a dead-easy one to answer, but never experienced it before so a little in the dark for me.

My wife had took her car to be fixed the other day. One of the lights on the dashboard came on indicating something wrong (don't ask me what, I don't drive so don't know).

Took it to the mechanic down the road, bloke who has a big yard and is the village mechanic who thought it might be something to do with the emmisions but didn't have the diagnostics hardware to give a proper fault finder and would need to take it into the local town.

Fair enough.

Car came back on Friday, local mechanic said the diagnostics had found the fault, it was the emissions sensor that was faulty, had replaced it, re-run the diagnostics and no faults found and the light had gone out. He'd driven the car for about 5-6 mile so make sure, all ok.

Saturday morning, wife and I went out, light came back on. Then went out. Then came back on again and has remained on ever since.

Now I've rung him up and he wants the car again and has said the following points:

1) He may not had installed it correctly
2) It could be because the part is new and may be a bit tempermental
3) If the above isn't true, he'll need to take it back to be re-diagnosed.

Now point 1 I understand

Point 2, I'm having trouble believing in this day in age that parts can be 'tempermental', I just can't get out of my head that something should work or it doesn't.

And point 3, if he needs to take it to be re-dianosed, have I every right to refuse to pay another diagnostics fee (£32 + VAT)?

Any advice?

His fault he is the mechanic, if he sold you dodgy parts its his problem, if he fitted the part incorrectly again its his problem, dont pay him a penny more! (and get him to fix it properly this time)

 

[SgtTupac]

He sounds reasonable enough, but dont pay for another diagnostic. Although there may be another fault on the car causing the light to come back on.

 

[waterproofbob]

I had a similar problem a few years back with my old mini mayfair. It comes down to the decency of the mechanic tbh, my opinion which was held by the garage we went to was that as we'd taken the car to him with a problem and paid him to fix it that we weren't paying him more until he'd fixed the original problem. Saying that if there is a bigger problem then obviously you have to pay the guy. That being said it being a mechanical system it being temperamental is possible ( can't say as not a car expert).

I'd say you have basically got to hope that the mech is a nice bloke and go from there.

 

[~J~]

The mechanic is great, we get on no problems and again don't really wanna cause any issues as he's the kinda bloke to help out with the silly thing (anti-freeze, water, lights aligning) at all hours, so would like to keep the good friendship that we've got.

But he's a sod for just doing something without asking you first and then giving the bill. Like the job I'm talking about, I specifically said "Let me know what's wrong, gimme a price and I'll take it from there". But on Friday he just brought the car back and said "Good new and bad, good is it's fixed, bad is it's £97". So he'd done the work without saying first. Irrelevant as I'd have given him to go ahead anyway, but would have just been nice to have been told!

Cheers folks, will have a word with him now and just say I'm not paying for another diagnostic but of course if there's something else wrong with the car I'll have to pay (and just hope he tells me first!! )