Wrong Wheel on car.. who to blame?

n3vrmind

n3vrmind

n3vrmind

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Just had a call from the company repairing my car, finally they have finished and it's going to be ready for me to collect before end of the day

However its come to light that my car had its wheels the wrong way round, the rear alloys are slightly wider than the fronts and they were basically the wrong way round, fronts were on the back and vice versa. In the process of performing the repairs they replaced one of the wheels and so essentially my car now has 3 rear wheels fitted

Now I know how this likely came about, when I purchased the car it had 4 tyres on that were all the same size RE40s, whereas the front tyres are supposed to be a smaller size (225 front, 245 rear). When my RE40 rears wore out I asked them to move the RE40 tyres from the front tyres to the back and instead put new RE50s 225s on the front, with the idea being that id wear through the other two RE40s next and then have RE50s all round, so the garage that did this obviously didn't follow my instructions and just moved the wheels from front to back instead of the tyres.

But while they messed up on swapping them around, they didnt replace the wheel with the wrong size, im honestly not sure who is legally responsible. Repair company are not accepting fault because they saw stock wheels and ordered a stock replacement not knowing any different.
 
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That's a tough call actually, regardless of whether the original tyre fitter was at fault they won't be liable for putting the correct alloys on the car.

I'd be inclined to think that the repair company is in the wrong - they haven't put the car back to the condition it was in before they started - they should have checked the size of the wheel that they were ordering.

Speak to your insurance co.
 
called eSure yesterday and explained

said i didn't think it was the tyre garages fault as they would only really be responsible for switching the wheels around to the right wheels and they didn't replace any of them

but then i agreed that the repair place had done the logical thing in ordering a stock wheel for that corner so i didn't really blame them

so i asked them really how to proceed in getting it sorted, chap i spoke to seemed quite helpful...

i was called back today by some angry scotsman who told me he was the lead in their engineering dept, pretty much opened up by biting my head off, telling me i shouldnt be making complaints about the repair garage because they had done what they should (i hadn't...) and that neither they or esure were responsible.

my counter to that was that i had 2 front and 2 rear wheels before the repair and thats what i should have after but he would have none of it, ended up being a circular discussion with the guy shouting the same things over and over, so i told him he's clearly not going to come up with a solution and was wasting my time and hung up.. he calls me back and says he got disconnected, i told him no i hung up and then did it again, he calls me 5 times more none of which i bother to pick up

i decide to accept the car back as is, and take it up with esure complaints later and maybe sort the wheel myself in the interim, however as its coming to the end of the day and i didn't have word of my car i called the repair co. and they have taken the wheel off to return it and get the correct one on instruction from esure

so after all the fuss perhaps he read the terms and realised it was their issue to fix, but now i have to wait yet another week to get my car back.... *sadface*
 
LeMson said:
Call esure again and explain whats happening now :)
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This.

That`s simply not on. He`s obviously had a call from esure and taken it the wrong way, but don`t put up with that. Ring esure, explain what you`ve just typed, about the multiple calls and say you don`t expect one of their repairers to speak abusively to you over the phone.

I would anyway. :mad:
 
I think I'm with Fox on this one. If I understand correctly the car has different sized wheels front and back. In the past these have been swapped over. Now the current repair company have replaced one tyre with what could reasonably be expected by them to be the correct size. However due to the previous swap which appears to be due to the OP's instructions thus has resulted in the "incorrect" size now being fitted.

I agree that ideally the repair company should have checked the tyre itself. but as they were, I expect, following instructions to return the car to a previous standard condition, then it us not unreasonable for them to have looked up the standard size and replace based on that. It would at least in part be the responsibility of the car owner to highlight any such deviations in the vehicle to the repair company before work is carried out.
 
Exactly. What you were essentially expecting them to have done was fit a wheel that did not conform to the manufacturers specifications or to notice that somebody had been daft enough to put rear wheels on the front when they were doing work that was presumably nothing to do with the front of the car.
 
Hades said:
I think I'm with Fox on this one. If I understand correctly the car has different sized wheels front and back. In the past these have been swapped over. Now the current repair company have replaced one tyre with what could reasonably be expected by them to be the correct size. However due to the previous swap which appears to be due to the OP's instructions thus has resulted in the "incorrect" size now being fitted.

I agree that ideally the repair company should have checked the tyre itself. but as they were, I expect, following instructions to return the car to a previous standard condition, then it us not unreasonable for them to have looked up the standard size and replace based on that. It would at least in part be the responsibility of the car owner to highlight any such deviations in the vehicle to the repair company before work is carried out.
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If I read it right they haven't mistakenly fitted the wrong size tyre but the wrong size replacement wheel.
 
Simon said:
What car is it. I'm surprised the wheels/ hub design let you do it
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They don't, as I understand there is a bolt on the front hub and matching notch in the alloy that means the rear alloy shouldn't fit, but the bolt is removable to allow you to fit after market wheels

And I maybe didn't make it clear the abusive 'engineer' chap was at esure, not the garage

Anyway it sounds like they agreed to swap the wheel with nissan for no cost, not sure if they are being pedantic but from having heard from this engineer again today they are going to hand it back with the rear wheels fitted to the front as it was received, this is after them on several occasions I couldn't get the car back in the wrong state because it was unsafe but whatever, i can take that up with the tyre garage
 
[TW]Fox;23933939 said:
Not sure I agree. They have fitted the correct wheel to the rear of the car.
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Their task is not to fit the correct wheel to the rear of the car, their task is to replace what is broken or, to put it a different way, re-instate the car to how it was pre-crash.
 
Insurance companies are a joke.
Understand the fault here, was it so difficult for them to say quietly to themselves. FFS this car has alloys wrong way round, send this one back and order new one then tell dumb customer why repair has taken an extra week.

Needed no hassle really.
Instead they have to wind you up first, then give in and do what you wanted anyway.
my 2p
 
DogsBody said:
Insurance companies are a joke.
Understand the fault here, was it so difficult for them to say quietly to themselves. FFS this car has alloys wrong way round, send this one back and order new one then tell dumb customer why repair has taken an extra week.

Needed no hassle really.
Instead they have to wind you up first, then give in and do what you wanted anyway.
my 2p
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Why would they know though? The assessor will go around the car and make a list of the parts needing replacement. They will replace the wheel with the one they assume to be on there, they aren't going to check every single part incase it has been changed
 
Disco Boy said:
Their task is not to fit the correct wheel to the rear of the car, their task is to replace what is broken or, to put it a different way, re-instate the car to how it was pre-crash.
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If the car was registered with the insurer as modified then I would think the repairer would be notified of it and would check the wheels. But if it's not listed as having modified wheels then I would expect that the repairer would simply fit replacement standard parts.

I'm assuming here that the insurer were unaware that the wheels were no longer standard (or at least on the standard axle).
 
Disco Boy said:
Their task is not to fit the correct wheel to the rear of the car, their task is to replace what is broken or, to put it a different way, re-instate the car to how it was pre-crash.
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No, it's not, unless it has declared modifications and an agreement to supply those parts. You will notice that most insurers specifically state that they will restore the car to its original specification unless agreed otherwise.
 
[TW]Fox;23936404 said:
No, it's not, unless it has declared modifications and an agreement to supply those parts. You will notice that most insurers specifically state that they will restore the car to its original specification unless agreed otherwise.
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But they didn't restore it to its original specification (at first) did they?

Anyway, they've replaced it with the correct wheel now so this discussion is moot.
 
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