Are garage deliberately trying wind me up?

Hi there,

On Sunday the speedo cable on my Cinqeucento 93/L snapped on the M25, so I didnt know how fast I was going, so I drove carefully (I followed a slow car!) back home.

On Monday I phoned the garage down the road to book the car in and on Tuesday I took the car to the garage for a new speedo cable to be fixed.

On arrival I was told "no worries mate, should be done by 5pm"

- Tue 5pm, rang up and told "Were waiting for a part, we will ring you tomorrow morning, first thing".

- Wed 3pm, rang up again and asked if ready told "We spoke to Fiat and they don't make the part anymore, were going to ring Fiat HQ" I then said I will get the part from shop4parts.co.uk and bring it round.

- Thursday 12pm - Part arrived in the post and took it down to garage and told again "will be done this afternoon mate". Phoned at 5pm and told not done yet.

- Friday 12pm - Phoned again, "should be done today mate"

Ok, ok maybe they are busy and I am impatient, but why do they keep fobbing me off. The place wasn't exactly heaving with cars when I went in.

Also, if I managed to find a part why couldnt they? I have seen several Cinquecentos in there before when I walked past, so they must know places to get parts from.

Your comments would be appreciated.

i was gonna say be patient. but it sounds like they're kinda taking the pi$$ slightly. Jesus itsonly a speedo cable.

sounds like they're gonna charge you for stupid amounts of labour.

in future. get the good ol' Haynes out and undertake it yourself.

Good Luck,
I live near Southampton and we have a main dealer and a Fiat service centre. My wife's Cinq needed a new filler neck for the fuel tank. The Service guy told me that once a car goes out of production they can't get parts because Fiat are not interested.
Best bet is to go to a scrappie.

i would imagine thats down to the inept parts bloke, after all, i can still get parts specific to a mk1 uno turbo from fiat dealers, 17 years after it went out of production

it should have went like this:

on sunday the speedo cable snapped
on monday morning you placed an order for a new cable at your local motorfactor
on monday evening after work you collected the cable and paid £10
on monday evening you fit the cable yourself in an hour at most.
on tuesday morning you've forgotten it ever happened.

you know it makes sense. a quick look at your haynes manual will confirm just how easy this job is, and a quick call to your local motorfactor will confirm how cheap and readily available the part is.

the garage are probably too busy to do your job, and too greedy to say no to any work. one thing you can be sure of, they arent buying the part from a fiat dealer, that doesnt happen unless its a dealer only part, which a speedo cable certainly isnt.

car manufactures are required to supply parts for a car for a minimum of 10 years after end of production

Thanks for all your replies, I phoned Fiat myself and the part is £14+VAT.

I'm picking it up tomorrow, I expect a very small bill form the garage or I will kick off!