Mr Clutch - Experiences please?

[jug]

all i can say is WATCHDOG. mr clutch, nationwide autocentre and quickfit were all featured on watchdog a few years ago, and of the 3 mr clutch was deemed the worst (with quickfit a close second). all 3 were caught on film telling porkies and bodging jobs. as they said on watchdog the whole motor trade is plauged with this type of behaviour but it seems the larger chains are the worst.

as i've said a million times build up a relationship with your local garages, then when you need something doing it will get done quickly cheaply and right first time. clutch fitting will cost £100 at a small independant garage. you dont pay until you're happy with the test drive. i'd rather get the bus than let somewhere like mr clutch touch my car.

the last time i went to a big chain was in 1999, quickfit screwed me good and proper. i only went because my engine dropped out round the corner from quickfit and recovery costs were going to be huge to get it home (£190). promised myself that was the last time i'd let it happen. places like that are comparable to halfords. you deserve better service, you deserve to save money, so why wont people go elsewhere and we can put these gibbons out of business.

 

[cars.robertsaerospace.com]

I'm not sure it's relevent, but...

I bought my two Ravaglioli vehicle lifts (I'm an Italian car specialist, so I should have Italian lifts...) from the local Mr Clutch (in Portsmouth) when they moved to a bigger unit and put in a new set.

The lifts were well looked after and serviced and have worked well in the years I've had them since

From what I gather it may be a franchise operation, and so there would be significant variation between branches.

As far as "fast fit garages" are concerned, I had a customer in the other day who'd just had new pads put on his car by "a leading fast fit garage". Unfortunately, they'd not noticed that his front discs were knackered and his new pads were trashed.

He needed new discs, and another set of new pads as the knackered ones would have unevenly worn the disc. What's even sadder is that I was slightly cheaper than the "national chain" despite using better quality components and being a marque specialist...

Also, before doing the work I eMailed a digital picture of the knackered disc to the customer, and showed him the parts I'd removed when he came to collect the car in line with Trading Standards "Good Garage Guide" practice.

Mike.

 

[Rover]

You giys have said enough to put me off Mr. Clutch I was considering them to replace the clutch on my other halfs Bravo. Thanks.

 

[Falcon_II]

I Used Mr cluch in Gateshead about 9 years ago. My Vauxhall Cav They did it that day and tryed there best to sell me a new clutch cable. the cluch was well fitted and there work seemed to be good. however I have recently heard about many people being ripped off by them. the good thing is if your clutch goes wrong then there guarentee is good. They are well established and are not going to close any time soon.

 

[alexGS]

I like the idea of using an independent FIAT/Alfa Romeo specialist (like www.cars.robertsaerospace.com above) for this kind of work (if not doing the job yourself).

This is the only choice in much of NZ and it's the work of these people that keep our cars reliably on the road. They work hard to preserve their reputation, since their market is small and they cannot afford to lose customers. Bear in mind that they will also have the experience of which parts to use, which parts wear out, and their labour rates will be less than a main dealership since they don't have the same overheads to pay. I believe it's well worth going a little out of your way to find such a facility.

Please trust that I am not affiliated with any particular establishment, just passing on what I have noticed over the years. I don't trust any of our local 'fast-fit' centres with my cars, because they just don't have the knowledge of FIATs/Alfa Romeos... My last encounter was at a 'Brakes' centre (Midas) where I ended up paying $500 for all sorts of unnecessary replacements (rear pads, disc machining, handbrake cables) and got the Lancia Thema back not fixed. The problem (rear brake imbalance) was caused by a faulty rear proportioning valve, which I diagnosed, removed, and refurbished myself at no cost.

-Alex

 

[Ulpian]

Reading this little lot has been a revelation.

I can't help thinking that in every case it would have been cheaper and safer to have gone to a main dealer in the first place.

I don't want to throw money away either, but unless you really can do it yourself it seems that these 'specialist chains' are worse than a holiday in Afghanistan. In fact I'll bet your average Talib can fix any clutch!

 

[devilz_own]

Fiat dealer changed the slave cylinder for £60 and problem cured. I had asked Mr Clutch if it was the slave and they said no way is that noise from the slave!! One up for Fiat for once.

A loud creaking when you pressed the pedal in & out. No other problems with it just the noise. I was shocked when Fiat dealer said £60 and thought I'd have it done and see, 45mins picked car up noise gone!

thanx, i think uve just told me what the fault in mine is its an intermittent creaky scraping sort of noise when i push pedal in..

as for mr clutch I hadnt heard of em til now...i suppose ignorance really is bliss, i hope those of u who got screwed sideways by them can get it resolved
with plenty of compo and take these a-holes for all they worth...which from what ive read... unfortunatly aint much

 

[Puntodan]

I had mega problems with Mr Crutch, sorry Clutch 2 years ago!

I had a very nice Alfa 164 Cloverleaf, quite a rare model the 164 let alone the cloverleaf, but the clutch started to slip my local place was booked up for a few weeks and i needed to use the car to go on Holiday and Mr Clutch said it would take 2 days. Not bad as they are big old cars, i even supplied my own clutch kit from a very well known clutch specialist that knew exactly wehat he was doing and has done for the last 25 years!

First off they called me to say my clutch was the wrong one, it wasn't, but they had got me another one that was right, from the same guy i got mine from I later found out! A week later and £400 i finally got my car back after coming back from my holiday to collect it. They told me that they had to replace the oil filter and oil as it was in the way when undoing bolts for the box. i was charged for that, which it had only had a full service 2 weeks before, i wasn't called before they did this!

I have all the manuals from alfa printed out that shows you exactly how to remove the box and change the clutch, at no point is there a special tool required or the need for the oil filter to be removed! I took the car away and preceeded to drive to Eastbourne, about 1/2 way through my journey the water temp goes to red and the oil pressure, which up until then had been spot on, hit the bottom of the gauge.

It had lost all of it's water and was leaking oil, aa were called and he checked the car over, was cool by now so started it up and there was a loud knocking noise, the bottom end had let go! The car was recovered back to Mr Clutch and was under inspection for several weeks, they denied all knowlege of certain things and called me a liar about not neededing a special tool or to remove the oil filter even with the manual under his nose!

I never got a refund or my car fixed even after legal action was set in motion, they had some get out clause and I lost out big time, I couldn't afford the £2000 for an engine rebuild so the car had to be scraped, with a brand new clutch and brakes that cost me in excess of £700!

There customer service is very very poor in branches and also from there head office and I would never use them again and would warn anyone away from them, if I had been able to do it myself i would have done and maybe it would still grace the roads today!

Dan

 

[Hellcat]

Sounds like a typical Mr Clutch meets car that isn't a standard Ford or Vauxhall. I didn't have the time to mess about taking the car back to have them fix the shaking they had caused - I needed the car for work so the Sedici had to take over the day-to-day work and the Black tipo went to the breakers.

I will never trust them with a car again. Fiat Specialists or trusted main dealers all the way.

p.s. a damn shame about your 164.. They have no idea what they are wrecking half the time.

 

[Puntodan]

They had no idea what the car even was, he tried to tell me it was a 2 litre twin spark as that is all they had in there book, I had to open the bonnet to prove it was a v6, should have taken it away then really not let them carry on!

 

[Andy_sx]

Dan, damn sorry to hear about the 164, but unfortunately it seems the way with mr clutch.. aftwer my initail flit with them telling me it wasnt my clutch then it going BANG litterally i had my car recovered there where it was having its clutch replaced for £200, the damn thing went again a week and a half later, and they didnt give me a replacement under warranty either, not that i was overly bothered as i will never be going back there again. tbh i try not to use a garage at all now, do pretty much all the work on my car myslef and also help friends and do a bit on the side to earn a bit of extra money now.
the only reason i went back initially was due to the fact no one local to me would touch my car, its a chuffing 1.2 bravo for crying out loud, not a 2.0!

dont bother with big chains as they dont really care about reputations, its the smaller garages that need a good rep to keep in business so will give you better service.

 

[jimmycricket]

As they are a franchise operation I think different Mr Clutches will be different, depending on the attitude of the boss and staff. I had a Citroen one done, no probs and 60% of the dealer price.

 

[louise124]

Rather than writing everything again i'm just adding my experieince via a thread that i posted this week under punto-technical

www.fiatforum.com/punto-technical/102091-punto-clutch-problem.html#post1094606

 

[reaper1988]

Mr Clutch + My Car = Judder. If only i had known earlier. Its not to bad tho. Still under warrenty so if it gets worse then they will have to fix it.

 

[Hellcat]

Mr Clutch + My Car = Judder. If only i had known earlier. Its not to bad tho. Still under warrenty so if it gets worse then they will have to fix it.

What makes you think they can fix it? They couldn't get it right first time.

 

[elec69]

I Used Mr cluch in Gateshead about 9 years ago. My Vauxhall Cav They did it that day and tryed there best to sell me a new clutch cable. the cluch was well fitted and there work seemed to be good. however I have recently heard about many people being ripped off by them. the good thing is if your clutch goes wrong then there guarentee is good. They are well established and are not going to close any time soon.

I used mr clutch in gateshead great set of guys so when i had a problem with my land rover went to the one in durham i am now left with a car sat on the drive which i can not use and they say there is nothing the matter with the clutch. had it to stwo other garages for inspection who both say it is most definatley the clutch and by the sounds of things they have not done the job i was billed for £888 so now having to pay again for complete new job going to photograph the work though and see whether i can get any money back trading standard say i must give the car back to mr clutch but after the damage thay have done so far damaged gear box tunnel and missing bolts from bell housing, gear box and starting motor i would rather have the job done right

 

[varesecrazy]

My in-laws took their 40,000 mile Kia Sportage ( yuk) in for a clutch,
all seemed good, then 1 week and 100 miles later it started running REALLY rough..,
£1000 later ( and 2 ECU's) it was suggested there must be damage to the wiring loom somewhere,

too coincidental for my liking..,


car wasn't worth spending another £1000+ on so it went for scrap via ebay.. lesson learned,
Charlie

 

[Tipojay]

an old thread i know but thought id add to the list of unhappy customers, i used the mr clutch in Norwich a couple of years ago to get my tipo clutch done were just round the corner from where i was living at the time and gave me what seemed a very reasonable quote of about £199.

i took the car down first thing Monday morning and left it with them i heard nothing for 2 days so i called to chase it the guy appologised and said it was delayed due to parts and also he explained the price quoted had gone up by £30 as my flywheel needed regrinding, they also advised me my rear pad's discs and calipers all needed work totalling to another £399 on top of the clutch job i told them i didn't want the extra work done just the clutch to which they replied they would do it but by not having the breaks done they would not offer any warranty on the clutch.. now at this point alarm bells should have rung and i wish id have told them to stick it picked up my car as it was and took it else where but i didn't and let the cowboys continue.

all seemed fine when i picked up the car it wasn't until a few months later the problems began to arise i started to get a very horrid burning smell sometimes when pulling away which in a matter of days was followed by stiffer gear changes a judder that could rattle your fillings out and and then finally it started jumping out of gear. i took it home and got my brother to give me a hand check the car over as i didn't really know a great deal about the underneath of a car at this point only to find the gearbox seal leaking and oil everywhere!.

it looks like originally it was my slave cylinder had failed (pedal just stuck to the floor) and i had a noisy thrust bearing, mr clutch had replaced everything but during there mucking about and thinking what else they can invent to charge me for they had neglected the oil seals and not bothered to bolt the gear box back together properly so all the gear oil had slowly leaked out over the space of a few months leaving my gearbox nice and dry.

so my poor tipo ended up being put off the road as we feared the gear box may be stuffed and i had to buy a cheap punto to get about in, luckily i managed to find a gearbox a couple of months ago so after its nice long break its just awaiting the work to be done now.

so anyone thinking about using mr clutch be warned it could end up costing you a lot more that just a clutch!, the only good thing to come from this is i learnt and now know a dam site more about cars then i did back then.... ill only get mugged off once!

 

[Ziggy122]

Mr Clutch is well known my friend for really bad experiences

I had a Cheap mr.Clutch clutch in my punto (not my choice it was before i brought the car)
Again experiencing the clutch judder you are on about

They are Bish bash bosh clutch fitting jobs!
And the fact they wont honour a warrenty over rear brake pads - thats a Load of ******** if you ask me

Brakes dont relate to the clutch - only if the hydraulics are linked, but again that wont affect anything either!

ziggy

 

[Tipojay]

yeah they tried to tell me that the rear brakes were binding and by not repairing them it would put extra strain on the new clutch so they were not prepared give warranty unless it was fixed but by all accounts from what I've read there warranty isn't worth squat any way! hopefully with threads like this about they wont get the chance to screw up anyone else's car i mean im more than capable of breaking my own car i don't need to pay someone to do it for me lol

it taught me a lesson tho i dont take any chances now both my tipo's go to a local garage my family has used for years one of the mechanics is ex fiat i think he's trust worthy very reasonably priced and I've been pleased with his work so far and my alfa only goes to a proper alfa romeo specialist expensive but excellent service.