Years ago my car wouldn’t start so called out Green Flag.

Local mechanic turns up and offers to take it to his garage.

It’s in for over a week, tells me how they had to interior out and it was a dodgy piece of loom.

They knock a fair chunk off the bill for taking so long IIRC it was about £300.

I get the car back and strip out the interior for a sound system install, going by the amount of crap and loose change trapped in the seat rails to interior had never been out.

The ****.

9ltrs of oil added to th engine after an oil change instead of 4.5ltrs. Bang . Core plugs ejected .
Loose wheel nuts on our company van last week also wasnt the garages fault. Apparently someone wanted to steal the wheel, only they forgot a jack .

Ouch, some worrying stories on this thread. I always take valuables/loose change out of the car but never thought to check the spare wheel afterwards!

Never had anything taken, but I did end up with an extra roller boot cover thing after a service once. It was from a Porsche. I took it back to the garage and they denied all knowledge. Which was weird.

If a garage is so un-trustworthy you have to remove all valuables from the car, would you really want to give them any repeat business, or trust them/be wanting to work on your car?

So I’ve looked and things aren’t in the house and I’m waiting for the service manager to get back to me.

But no, my car won’t be going back there. If I can’t trust them to the point where I need to remove things from my car I can’t trust them to actually do the work properly either.

If I’m convinced it went missing while in their care is it worth involving the police? They are part of a chain so I will be making a phone call to their head office.

If a garage is so un-trustworthy…

It ain’t the garage. It’s the people who work there.

This kind of sh1T is why I do all my own servicing and maintenance.

I guess you may as well contact the police, not sure if they’d investigate though as you can’t be 100% sure it went missing in the garage’s care and doesn’t sound like there are any witnesses. But worth recording it at least, maybe they’d have previous complaints or it’s there if someone else in future reports something stolen during a service at that garage.

Other side of things here. Worked in a Ford dealership in the late 90’s and would often look into cars to see what CDs were lying around. I’d take them home, copy to Minidisc and put the CDs back in the car first thing the following morning.
Never actually kept anything though.

So I eventually got to talk to the garage manager (big chain so took a while). They say they have checked CCTV and nothing is shown. However, I’m not sure how you can say this as they needed to go through the car to service it – particularly the glove box where the service manual is.

I’ve reported it to the chains head office and the police. Realistically at this point have I got any hope or should I just suck it up, find a new garage and move on. What I would like is a refund n the items taken and on the sevice plan I bought as a minimum (since this is now worthless to me).

I assume I’ve got little to no chance going through small claims court. It isn’t worth going through the insurance as they will only cover the items taken.

Do a tweet

I’d suggest don’t even leave the car itself unattended for too long…
Was doing some checking on a scrap yard a few years ago to discover a report of a car theft related to the yard owner. Turns out that he’d driven past a car that had been sat in the same place on a street near the yard for over a week, so he headed out with the truck & hoisted it. Neighbour spotted the lift and phoned the local police, who located the car already tucked away in the de-polluting shed, beginning its journey into a heap of bits.

My RS4 was returned to me with the front offside wheel assembly detached. My colleague had a RS6 that was being given it’s first service, we worked next to the garage on the top floor. He saw it going past at warp factor 9. mounting pavement and hitting a rubbish bin. All captured on CCTV. When he went in not that long later ‘to collect it’ there was some issue they had found which meant they needed to keep it in blah blah. He summonsed the owner, showed him the footage and suggested that they had a new car and so would he thanks. Which they eventually did.
Never trust garages, ever.

My car’s in for it’s service today, will remember to check the spare wheel!

Nothing of value left in it, never have done. No point in putting temptation in the mechanic’s mind.

Cars being ‘tested’ isn’t surprisingl. I worked for a large Japanese dealership for a while and the servicing team always seemed to be borrowing cars – especially over the w/e. I used to do the drop-offs until someone twigged that as a 20year old I probably wasn’t (definitely wasn’t) insured for the cars I was ragging driving back to customers houses.

My dad left his large Merc company car at the dealership for a service – was told that he’d not be able to collect on the Friday due to some spurious reason, could he collect Monday? He picked it up on the Monday as required, slung his works boots, paperwork and golf clubs in the boot. Carried on his day. Finished early, got to the clubhouse and on removing his golf clubs discovered that someone had left a baggy of Bolivian marching powder in the boot.

To say he was unimpressed was an understatement. The dealership denied all knowledge – apparently, it had categorically NOT been borrowed over the w/e. The police confirmed it was coke, took it away but nothing came of it.

I expect my car to be ‘tested’ any time it goes to the garage. However, it’s got journey tracking via an app that shows the speeds, route, etc. The dealer cannot turn this off. When I drop it off I make a point of casually noting with the service manager what a great function it is for tracking my mileage and doing expenses. The look on their face the first time was classic.