written by Tigster64 on 16/09/2014
I picked Powells Garage because they responded with a good quote on a website called fixmycar.com. I dropped the car off at the specified time and drove off in the courtesy car which is charged at 30p a mile for an old Daewoo Matiz. I asked for a full service and to use parts approved by the manufacturer. In the afternoon I was called and told the bad news: I needed two new front tyres, there was a fair bit of rust underneath, the silencer was needing replacement and they couldn't get air or fuel filters for my car that day and the brake fluid needed replacing. Why they left most of the day to tell me this is anyone's guess. When I went to pick the car up in the late afternoon, all they had done was replace the oil, brake fluid and tyres. To add insult to injury, they charged me considerably more than the original quote. They had also failed to notice a fault with the driver's door. Driving home, it became immediately apparent that the wheels were not balanced and the steering wheel was off centre. As the garage was now closed, I called them the next day and went there to get these faults rectified. They took the car and made me wait for some time and then told me they had balanced the wheels and adjusted the tracking. The men on the desk didn't actually listen to me as they assumed I had said the car was pulling to one side which it wasn't; they couldn't understand what I meant by the steering wheel being off-centre. I had read on the internet that this was caused by shoddy tracking practices. I then drove home only to realize the problems were exactly as before. I called them and as usual they were very defensive and unwilling to admit any fault on their part. They said to return to the garage and they would put it right. By now I was running out of patience so I told them that I'd take it to my local Kwik Fit instead because I trusted them and they had newly installed tracking equipment. I did this and they found the balancing and tracking to be way out and couldn't believe someone had charged me for such incompetence. They also looked at the silencer and found it to be in perfect condition; only the outer protective shield was rusty. This all cost me quite a bit extra of course. Powells at no time apologized or admitted fault and ended up being rude and unpleasant. I was left with a car after the most expensive service of its life with old filters and a clonking driver's door. A total rip off from start to finish.
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