Very expensive, no welcome, your car is messed with
The engine fault indicator was showing on my Fiesta.
My usual local garage diagnosed it as relating to the oxygen sensor in the exhaust and after trying a 3rd party component that didn't resolve the problem, concluded that the car perhaps needed a genuine Ford part. They weren't able to source such a part themselves and so they suggested I take it to an official garage on this occasion. As Burns of Congleton was my nearest such garage, I booked it in there.
The first issue came with that very first call, with a receptionist who didn't seem to want to listen to what I had to tell her about the diagnostics and the oxygen sensor, and instead went through an obvious script asking me irrelevant questions about the car. As I was short on time on a dinner break, I had to interrupt and point out that the problem was as I had previously described. She didn't much appreciate that and got quite snotty. I almost cancelled the booking but the closest alternative was in Wilmslow, 14 miles away, so I stuck with it. The car was booked in and I took it to the garage a few days later.
I don't know if the receptionist who took my keys was the same one I had spoken to on the phone, but "service with a smile" wasn't in her repertoire that's for sure. After handing over my keys I left for the day, looking forward to an official part resolving the issue with the engine light.
Later that day I called the garage to learn that actually, they had tried an official part and it hadn't resolved the issue because the light was still showing, so they intended to do further diagnostics. They asked if I could leave the car for a few days which I agreed to.
A few days later, I received a call. They had put the new part back on and played with some connections, and the light had gone off. The charge? £404 - double what my usual garage had estimated it to cost.
I suggested that if the new part had only resolved the issue after some connectors had been played with, then perhaps playing with those connectors alone could have resolved the problem and that I could go back to the old part. They said no, they'd tried this, and that the car ran "like a bag of nails" with the old part on so I needed the new one. I found that claim strange, because the car was running perfectly fine with the old part when I dropped it off at the garage.
I did consider asking for the part to be removed, but they would of course have charged me for the time for installing and then removing the part anyway, so I decided to swallow the cost and simply never go there again. They added that the car had been cleaned though, as though that was supposed to help jusify the extortionate bill.
I went to pick up the car and experienced for a second time the opposite of a friendly welcome. I then found that my dash-cam had been removed from the screen, was placed in the centre console and the cable around the window was hanging down. So before driving off, I had to fix that.
Oh... and the clean that the car had received? The car is now a patchwork of cleaned and missed areas. So I'll have to re-do that as well.
19. November 2019
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