As title really. Having an issue with a motor dealer chain in the Borders. We live in England, their head office is in Scotland but their garage who cocked up is in England too.

If I want to take action to recover costs do I do it via the English system or Scottish? And yes, I have googled it but can’t seem to find a definitive answer…

A tanning of their windaes would be the correct legal response! 😆

If it’s Arnold Clark, I would just go along to the showroom that sold you the car, take a look at some other cars in there with a discrete packet of fresh prawns hidden in your pocket and hide the around different cars.

That way at least you will get some satisfaction after they have bummed you.

I did the opposite as a scottish resident with an English company.

Worked with Hilton Baird to recover £4k. Recommended

Border Cars?

The folks you allege ‘cocked up’ are in England. That should be sufficient to start with.

You don’t say what the nature of the issue is but is there a written contract? For example did you sign or verbally agree to use their standard terms and conditions before they did the job? If so you need to check what it says about governing law and jurisdiction.

Otherwise on the facts you’ve given it sounds like the place of performance of the Contract was England and you are therefore perfectly entitled to use the English system. If you end up serving papers on them make sure you at least copy them to the address of their business in England as well as sending to head office in Scotland.

Write to the MD asking whether he’d prefer to have court papers served in England or Scotland.

That may resolve it anyway, if it doesn’t then do the opposite of whatever he/she tells you.

Threaten to burn down their warehouse?

Thanks for all the replies. Wanmankylung has the winner! 😉

They did some work on a car earlier this year to replace a suspension component. They told me that the work did not require tracking checking or adjustment (which I now know is wrong).

I wasn’t given standard t&c’s as part of the work.

Tyres quickly wore out with very odd wear (symmetrically bald on inside shoulders on front wheels).

Already gone to MD which is why they’re now talking to me – it was their customer care people who lied about the tracking!

Have emailed them with a proposal to move to a solution, next step letter before action methinks (English system!).

Must be very expensive tyres for this to be worth it unless other consequential loss, or you can do this all via small claims.

would be small claims in England

So you’ve had premature wear out of 2 tyres due to tracking?
Did you spot this before they became illegal?
Were the tyre new when you got the car back?
How often did you check them?
They told you tracking was not needed. Is this in writing? All they’ll say in court is the car was fine and you probably kerbed the car or whatever and caused the tracking to be off and are just blaming them.
Best case scenario for you is part payment on some new tyres.
Worst case (and most probable) is nothing happens as you have no proof.
Do you really need all this stress, time off work and possible legal costs for the sake of at most £150?
I am not a lawyer.

I’m with iolo. Unless there is a loss I’m not seeing

Can you prove that they said that the tracking didn’t need checking

How long after suspension work was completed was the uneven wear of the front tires noted?
What work was carried out?
Can you prove beyond all doubt that the work carried out by the garage has affected the tracking and not an interface with a pothole or kerb have caused the issue?
The very most you can expect to gain from this would be the cost of getting the tracking adjusted and two replacement tires.

Good grief! Would you lot like to wind your neck in a bit?

I’ve asked for help with the legal basis of escalating a claim if they choose to not discuss this amicably – if I wanted a blow by blow description of whether it’s worth doing then I would have put more detail as this has been going on a while.

The first formal stage seems to be different in England v Scotland (letter before action type thing) so I wanted to better understand which way I should go.

Thanks for the helpful comments!

Rich_s – Member
Thanks for the helpful comments!

Any time fella, just ask! 😆

The “tanning” that you speak of – does it require a sunbed? 😉

Oh no we had opinions

We are just pointing out how things will probably go. Not having a go.
You came here for help. Some help and possible outcome based on the information you supplied was given.
I bid you the best of luck.