Dispute with a mechanic

[Mirage]

Unfortunately, regardless of how specialist someone is these things happen. If only it was as black and white as perfect diagnosis or 'knowing what parts cause the problem'.

Sounds like one of the better places you could have gone to. The problem you were having has a multitude of root causes, none of which can be proven/disproven without actually doing the work. He's gone for the cheapest, it didn't work (although this isn't proven either!) and as the fault is back is now offering to do more work minus the labour. I'd be suprised if many places would offer you that.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Unfortunately, regardless of how specialist someone is these things happen.

And they will continue to because there is no incentive for a garage to be skilled at diagnosis. Why bother when you can generate profit by simply replacing parts until you strike lucky, knowing that the customer picks up the tab?

When you are paying somebody for skilled labour and diagnosis it should be them that assumes the risk of not properly diagnosing the problem. Almost all places CHARGE for diagnosis - guesswork isn't diagnosis!

I had the same thing with a 'specialist' years ago. I had a coolant leak. They 'diagnosed' 4 different things before they eventually got lucky and realised it was the radiator. But why would they care? They billed me for labour every time! They generated loads more money from having no clue what was wrong but pretending they did than they would have done from getting it right first time.

 

[Kenai]

Similarly though, with the ever increasing complexity of cars, problems that can manifest with seemingly unrelated error messages etc. if every mechanic had to pick up the tab for trying to fix one of 15 sensors that cause Error Fuel Mix Incorrect for example, they'd all be either out of business or charging £300 for a days worth of diagnosis on every car before you even think about fixing it.

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place really - you can equally argue they shouldn't have to pick up the tab trying to fix your over complicated, half wrecked £1500 Merc CLS AMG.

 

[[TW]Fox]

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place really - you can equally argue they shouldn't have to pick up the tab trying to fix your over complicated, half wrecked £1500 Merc CLS AMG.

So errr, don't offer professional services in diagnosis on those vehicles if you are skills are not sufficient to do it.

Where else do you have to pay more the less skilled the operator is?

'Thanks for ordering your new laptop sir - that'll be £900'
'But it was £600 before?'
'Yea, the guy building it was a bit slow and kept making mistakes'

 

[Kenai]

That's a great solution, 'don't offer it' so suddenly the car mechanic business decreases by about 90%, supply and demand sees to it that you have to pay about £500 just to have someone even look at the car and it will take 3 months before your spot in the queue to get repaired.

Eventually we have to accept that cars are getting increasingly complicated, we are not (as a population) willing to pay the sort of money required for people genuinely clever enough to 'diagnose' those vehicles properly to consider it as a viable career option next to everything else they can do and so this is the lot we are stuck with. There probably was someone who could have identified the OPs issue immediately but he probably charges twice as much and so gets ignored for most things.

If I go out and buy the latest high performance 3 series for peanuts off the freeads without a warranty, I expect that to be my risk when it comes to repairs, not whichever unsuspecting garage has to try and fathom out which random piece of technology has caused the usually highly vague error message on the ECU.

As for where else - computer repair is the obvious one, you'll be through a new graphics card and a set of RAM to fix your soundcard issue down at your friendly local PC megastore before you know it.

Ultimately, someone has to pay to try and repair these increasingly complicated machines and if you put the cost of that on the mechanics themselves, there soon won't be many left and they'd be damned expensive.

 

[MatteH Oxford]

The problem was a red warning on the dashboard of a steering wheel and a lock.

They plugged it into the diagnostic system and he said it came back with "change cheapest component" which was apparently the CAS module which costs £245+VAT (plus fitting)
.

Er.....normally a diagnosis would come up with a fault code of some description. Sometimes the tester will give you pointers as to what parameters have to be set or broken in order for a car's ECU to turn on the malfunction light or if it doesn't then you can look up the fault code and see what causes the light to come on.

For certain system functions and monitoring of sensors etc, the ECU either expects to see a voltage/not see a voltage or see a range of voltages for given circumstances i.e. 3.5v from the air flow sensor @ 4500RPM, 1v from it @ idle speed. If the ECU sees, say, 2v at 5000RPM then it will flag up a code & turn the malfunction light on. When the EGR solenoid is commanded open, the ECU expects to see 12v back at the ecu earth pin. 0v would mean it's stuck or there's a break in the wire. The fault code for both systems (EGR and airflow sensor) would be called something like "signal voltage stuck low" as the ECU either in't seeing a voltage when it expects to or the voltage is lower than it expects (as in the airflow fault at 5k)

 

[[TW]Fox]

If I go out and buy the latest high performance 3 series for peanuts off the freeads without a warranty, I expect that to be my risk when it comes to repairs, not whichever unsuspecting garage has to try and fathom out which random piece of technology has caused the usually highly vague error message on the ECU.

On the flipside, if you decide to generate profit from selling your skills to members of the public, it should be your risk when it turns out you are not quite as skilled and knowledgeable as you first thought and misdiagnose things. You are not doing it out of the goodness of your heart, you are doing it to generate cold, hard cash. You are a skilled professional. The customer is not. Risk is usually borne by a business not it's clients.

As for where else - computer repair is the obvious one, you'll be through a new graphics card and a set of RAM to fix your soundcard issue down at your friendly local PC megastore before you know it.

And whats the defining characteristic of PC repair? People who think they know what they are doing but don't... interesting one

Ultimately, someone has to pay to try and repair these increasingly complicated machines and if you put the cost of that on the mechanics themselves, there soon won't be many left and they'd be damned expensive.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing if the inferior ones went bust leaving only the more expensive really skilled ones who might charge 50% more per hour but you know damn we'll they'll nail it in half the time without the distraction of the lower end of the market dragging price down.

If I had the option to pay 50% more per hour to somebody I know knew EXACTLY what he was talking about and would just fix it first time no hassle then I'd jump at it. One specialist once asked me if my E39 had air conditioning or not. Of course it does, BMW never sold one without it in the UK. Come on guys, know your products before you call yourself a 'specialist' otherwise what does that term even mean anymore?

A computer is a tool to aid in diagnosis, it doesn't do the diagnosis for you. Some garages don't seem to realise this any more. But there is no incentive for them to realise it, who cares how many attempts it takes?

 

[Kenai]

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing if the crap ones went bust leaving only the more expensive really skilled ones who might charge 50% more per hour but you know damn we'll they'll nail it in half the time without the distraction of the lower end of the market dragging price down.

You know just as well as I that if you left 'only the skilled ones' that would constitute such a small segment of the market you'd be paying a hell of a lot more than an extra 50% per hour

The supply would be so small you'd struggle to even get your car looked at within a month.

It's an all round crap situation created essentially by virtue of the fact manufacturers can make exceptionally complicated cars that they need not care about beyond 3 years old, combined with a population of consumers who want better things for less money buying complicated but cheap cars and then expecting to get them repaired cheaply.

 

[[TW]Fox]

It's only partly that - my 13 year old E39 is hardly a super complex mega computer beast of a car and the issue I encountered years ago was just basic stuff - heck I pointed them in the direction of the damn radiator after I had a look myself and saw it dripping off the bottom of the radiator - THE MOST COMMON FAILURE POINT on an E39 - *after* they'd replaced the header tank, a pipe, a drain plug...

Whats hard about a pressurised cooling system on a car introduced in 1996? Nothing.

 

[mikeh501]

...and that's the point isn't it, you would expect them to know the weak spots and likely faults on a manufacturer they are a specialist in. If they do that marque day in day out they should build up that experience; and it's that expertise your paying a premium for above and beyond avg joe mechanic down the road. I'd also expect the specialist to have all the specialist tools and diag equipment too, not just a obd reader!

 

[jono_astra]

.

 

[pepsilol]

And this is why I built my own workshop.

I have been away from mechanics for the past 2-3 years and recently due to my Jag being under warranty had to get involved with a workshop.

The process of getting my car fixed took 3 -4 weeks and drained me in the process.

 

[Frozennova]

You also have to take into account, garages dlcannot return electrical components once they've been fitted. So if he removes the new one and refits the old one its additional labour and he's now got a £250 component sat wasting money

 

[JackRegan]

But presumably you are going to that garage because they have advertised themselves as being a specialising in the vehicle you want fixing. You have rightly or wrongly formed the opinion they have experience in repairing your make and model of car hence why you chose them above over a regular or local garage.

The times when I use regular garages they box up the majority of the part(s) they have replaced and leave them in my boot. At least I know as best I can they have been replaced.

I think you have to chalk this one down to experience. Negotiate as best you can to have the steering column replaced and hopefully this will be the end of it for you. Then in future chose carefully and be sure to be clear on why and what they are doing, also ask for the old parts back.

Good luck

 

[MatteH Oxford]

guys its a tough one really. He hasnt done anything wrong at all, he has plugged in his diagnostics equipment on to read what the fault code is, and its come up with what ever fault it listed. Now probably from his experience it could have been one component or the other.

It's not tough at all, the component should have been tested and proven faulty before replacing it. Otherwise it's just parts swapping and guesswork, no matter if it happens to be a "common fault" and you "should normally" replace part x over part y.

 

[Hades]

You also have to take into account, garages dlcannot return electrical components once they've been fitted. So if he removes the new one and refits the old one its additional labour and he's now got a £250 component sat wasting money

So the garage should test the old one before ordering the new. Unfortunately that is rarely done nowadays by garage fitters. Real mechanics are a dying breed, in part due to the design of modern cars which may that testing is impractical.

 

[MeEsH BaKkA]

It's not tough at all, the component should have been tested and proven faulty before replacing it. Otherwise it's just parts swapping and guesswork, no matter if it happens to be a "common fault" and you "should normally" replace part x over part y.

Whilst this is true, the cost of diagnostics alone would drive custom elsewhere. Imagine the labor cost for a strip down and test of all possible faulty components, and once you get into that detail if you find one faulty component it may not be the only fault and you would then be obliged to carry on inspecting the whole system even if you found a fault at first as there may be something else wrong.

In an ideal world that is how garages would work, but this is not an ideal world and people want the cheapest and quickest possible fix.

 

[Orionaut]

So the garage should test the old one before ordering the new. Unfortunately that is rarely done nowadays by garage fitters. Real mechanics are a dying breed, in part due to the design of modern cars which may that testing is impractical.

Explain how one might test for an intermittent fault! (Which sensor/ecu faults frequently are)

 

[IAmATeaf]

To be honest what people are asking for and the level of testing then required would probably mean the car being stripped, parts being sent away and the job taking a lot longer. My local garage will sort of do this but only if you're prepared to pay for this initial investigative work and pay for things to be tested.

To all the demanders, would you be prepared to pay and put up with the job taking significantly longer.

 

[JackRegan]

Explain how one might test for an intermittent fault! (Which sensor/ecu faults frequently are)

To be honest what people are asking for and the level of testing then required would probably mean the car being stripped, parts being sent away and the job taking a lot longer. My local garage will sort of do this but only if you're prepared to pay for this initial investigative work and pay for things to be tested.

To all the demanders, would you be prepared to pay and put up with the job taking significantly longer.

But isn't this why you chose a specialist in the first place? They're supposed to have experience in dealing and repairing your type of vehicle.

I fully appreciate a standard garage having to rely on fault finders as they may never have dealt with your type of vehicle or fault before.

There are plenty of enthusiasts on here with self taught mechanics able to provide experience on repairs so is it too much to expect a garage calling themselves specialists to be on the ball?

Professional