On this theme of garage rip offs. An elderly female neighbour was at my door yesterday with a flat tyre on the front of her Astra. Could I possibly fit her spare for her? Of course I can, I really like being able to help with small tasks like this.
First thing to check was whether it actually has a spare, and, hallelujah, it does - and a full size one at that, albeit on a steelie not an alloy. She was interested to watch so she hung about and chatted away as I worked. Turns out the car had just been serviced by one of the fairly local small garages and it turns out to be one I know who does not have a particularly good reputation, so I was interested to hear what she had to say. As regards the wheel change, it all went well, although her spare only had about 10psi in it so I had to cart it over the road to my garage to inflate it before fitting (my compressor had been used that morning so still had a good head of pressure in it. - goes to show they hadn't checked the spare pressure at the service though (I suspect many don't?) Also noticed the hub flange had a coating of white ceramic grease on it to stop the alloy binding to it (which is good practice) and I could see some white grease on the caliper too, again, all to the good. However she was not at all happy with the garage, telling me they'd charged her quite a lot for wheel nuts. She seemed to have no idea why and couldn't understand why she needed wheel nuts.
When I'd checked in the boot for a spare I noticed there was an empty slot in the tool/jack holder where I would have expected to find the locking wheel nut key and it wasn't in the glove box either but then I noticed there were no locking nuts and, even stranger, one wheel nut on each wheel looked shiny and new. Must admit I was surprised to find no locking nuts (bolts actually) but, hey ho, that just made my life easier. Then I got the story about the wheel nuts and, putting two and two together I recon either they couldn't find the locking key or the locking wheel nuts were damaged so they had to "jimmy" them off and replaced them with standard items. My bet's on the key being "lost". My neighbour seems to know nothing of this though.
The strange thing is that the customer (my neighbour) seems to have received no explanation or justification for any of this and it's left her very unhappy with the garage. I encouraged her to ring them up for an explanation - even offered to ring on her behalf - but she's a "wee old soul" and doesn't want to "cause a fuss" She tells me she won't be going back to them again and wanted me to suggest where she should take the car in future. I know she'll get good service and a friendly reception at Kenny's so suggested she just stick her head in their door and say hello. He's a bit nearer to us too. What a shame though for the other business, They've just lost a customer due to this poor customer relations.