AIBU to only pay the price they quoted me?

[topayornottopay]

Car had an intermittent fault with a light coming on. Took it to local garage who looked and advised me to take to main dealer to put their machine thing on it which would diagnose the issue.

Took to a main dealer. They quoted me £55+vat to do the diagnostics, so I left it with them as they couldn't do it right away.
Got a call a few days later saying the diagnostic thing didn't show anything as its an older model, but they are going to check a few things for me and is it took to leave it with them a little longer. I said ok thanks and they said they'd call me back.

Didn't hear anything for a while and then about 2 weeks after I got a call saying they can't find the actual problem, but said they thought it was a problem with something electrical and a very common fault with this car so they think its that. To replace will be over £1000. Car is worth about £900 at a push. So I said, no I won't get the part changed as it doesn't actually affect the running of the car, its just a bit annoying at times.

They then said they had spent 14 hours looking for the problem which their labour bill came to just over £1300! But as a 'good will gesture' they would only charge fee £400.

AIBU to say I'm not paying that, because all I asked them to do was to put it on the diagnostic thing at the price they quoted. When they called they made no mention of hourly rates to look again at it, they made it sound like as their machine didn't show anything they'd take a quick look for me. No mention of additional cost. Plus if its such a common fault, surly they'd have realised this before spending 14 hours on it? And the fact they don't actually know if that IS the fault, its like they are guessing anyway.

I have said I will not pay, as they hadn't said it would cost more than they quoted, and they have threatened not to give me my car back until I pay. Anyone know where I stand with this?

I think your issue here will be you acknowledge that they did phone you and tell you they would be doing more tests - surely you didn’t expect that to be in the initial charge?

Sounds like you may need to contact citizens advice or similar but I think the fact you agreed to them looking further and then left it with them for two weeks will make it hard not to pay something extra

You left it with them for a couple of weeks. What did you think they were going if not working on it ??

They should have been explicit that the original charge didn't cover this

In repair scenarios an initial cost is often estimated with the proviso that you will be contacted should the actual work look likely to exceed that estimate, at which point the customer can decide to proceed or not

Doing a grands worth of work on something that's been handed in with a 50 quid quote is fucking ridiculous

I was service manager at Audi and VW for 8years and I must say that you should absolutely not pay that bill!
It is drummed into the service advisors daily, and during training, that they can not charge for anything which is not specifically quoted for.
Unless they have a phone call recording of them telling you they would do more tests which will cost X amount, and you agreeing, then they have no leg to stand on.
I dealt with this type of customer complaint so many times, and once investigated, if there was no proof of quote then we didn't and couldn't charge the customer (the service advisors would get a stern slap on the wrist instead)
They can not keep your car.
Demand it back and tell them you are only willing to pay for the £55+vat that was quoted.
Ask to speak to the service manager or General manager/director if required.
Customer satisfaction scores are so important to main dealers at the moment, that as soon as a director hears there is a complaint that is not being solved, they will usually just let it go, in the interest of keeping a customer happy and preventing a negative feedback score (which financially costs them a lot more than your bill would)!

Hope this helps.

This is a common trick with garages and tradespeople generally. They lead the customer to assume there's no extra charge but hit them with a bill after the fact. You'll struggle to get out of paying them the £400 I'm afraid. With these people you need to be very specific in advance what the charges will be and not assume additional work is included in what's already agreed.

Can you ring your local trading standards department to get advice ?

I think you were probably a bit naive to assume they wouldn't charge you a bit more for doing further work on it.

However, they are out of order not to let you know there would be additional costs, and what their hourly rate is. They should have given you this in writing. If cars is their business then they'll have known your car wasn't worth much and it wouldn't be worth spending a lot of money trying to fix a minor fault.

I'd definitely speak to citizen's advice.

They can't keep your car if they don't have records of you agreeing to the work. If they didn't tell you the fee for the extra work then they can't enforce it.

I took a car to a main dealer once for its first MOT after I bought it from them (it was 4 years old when I bought it, one careful owner from new who had clearly upgraded to the next model) - and they massed the MOT but gave me an "advisory" that it would be a good idea to have a particular part replaced although it wasn't an MOT failure so didn't need to be done immediately. Their price for the new part was £350 but a quick google found that it was easy enough to get a compatible equivalent for £80 so I did that, and had it fitted by my local (non-main-dealer) garage. 4 weeks later the main dealer started phoning me to arrange for me to bring in the car to have the £350 part fitted, which I ignored at first but they didn't let up so eventually I asked them to leave me alone, and they said they had ordered the part for me specially and I had to bring the car in - I had never even been asked if I wanted them to order it, and certainly never agreed to pay them anything further.

In your situation, they are just trying to railroad you into acquiescence because they are relying on you being too nice and kind to be assertive. They are well used to pressure-selling techniques. They fact that they have your car does make it tricky but they don't have a legal basis to keep it - do you have a spare key? Chances are you could just go and fetch it and drive it off, it's most likely just sitting in their car park without any kind of barrier.

Thank you for the repllies so far. And especially @JasmineW88, that is very helpful.

To clarify, when they called they did not indicate there would be an extra charge. it was a friendly call and they made it sound like because their machine didn't work with this model as it was old they would take a quick look for me and could they keep it a little longer to do so. I suppose yes I should have said at that point, will it cost extra, but I suppose as they sounded friendly and were a main dealer I trusted they'd have told me that.

I will seek legal help as I've read they can hold onto my car, although that's unclear if that's only the case if they had actually fixed something and put new parts on it. which they didn't. And I don't believe they spent 14 hours on it either. Seems more they googled the problem and have come back with that, as they don't actually know.

Also 14 hours is not what I'd class as a quick look. I only chased after 22 weeks because I hadn't heard and didn't need the car bak urgently.
Also because the phone call suggested they were doing me a favour to take a quick look and would fit it in when they could, so I was not worried with the length of time they had it.

2 weeks, not 22!

Is it a golf by any chance?

@wannadisc0 yes the garage I took it to initially checked it over, maybe 10 minutes when I said what the problem was and they said need to get it to main dealer as they will have a specific diagnostic machine, as theirs unlikely to find the issue as its was a more general type one, and the local garage didn't charge for any of that.

This is exactly why we go to our local independent garage - and have done for over 20 years. They see us as valued customers, whereas dealerships just see you as a big fat wallet - with their task being to say/do/recommend anything in order to extract hundreds if not thousands of pounds from you.

I called our garage yesterday to book the car in for an MoT. I asked them about a particular issue and they said that, as long as it's safely attached with no dangerous sharp bits, they were allowed to pass it. The receptionist commented to me that they will sometimes use a bit of gaffer tape on something non-dangerous and cosmetic in order to get it to pass the MoT!

Is your normal garage a small place, though? Ours is completely independent, but they have all of the computer diagnostic equipment for all makes. They don't charge anything for diagnostics and give you a fixed price if you want to go ahead with the work, no pressure at all.

Surely this dealership knew the rough value of an old car and that it would be madness to pay £400, let alone £1,300, just to have it diagnosed. They would also know that the owner of a car worth £900 is highly likely not to have a large amount of disposable cash for non-essential repairs.

To be honest, if their specialist diagnostic equipment doesn't work on one of their own marque's models - and they didn't even know that before accepting the job - and it takes them 14 hours looking into it before telling you that they think it might be what is admittedly a commonly known problem.... what on earth are they charging their premium prices for? It's a bit like a burger van charging Michelin restaurant prices, even though your hotdog is still pink in the middle.