General Chat

Not everybody takes their motors to main agents for a fleecing, surly service and a huge bill. The company I work for sends its top end cars to an authorised independent in west London. They are busy.

The garage has a bit of a problem in that ( like most London biz ) it is stuck for room. As a result it often has to bring cars onto the road for a short while. The road is a cul-de-sac with, of course, yellow lines.The parking gestapo take full advantage of that but the garage always pays the tickets.
Now they have gone up a notch.

The Jag I often drive (not own) was in for service and minor repairs. The insurance ccvers garage mechanics. Unfortunately an apprentice without a full licence moved the car and parked it on the yellow lines. It was there apparently for an hour. When the guy came to move it into the workshop the gestapo sprang into action and they called the police.

Fuzz arrived demanded DL. As the mechanic had no full car licence fuzz declared no insurance and sent for the tow truck which blocked the cul-de-sac for some time 'cos of all the argy bargy. I was unaware.

Usually the garage brings the car back. This time we got a difficult conversation at the end of which I discovered the Jag was in the Wandsworth car pound. They will not release it without huge payment for tow and storage plus evidence that the person collecting was insured to drive it. They refuse to accept the garage personnel or the fact that the car was ok on MID.

The only named drivers are y.t. and a guy who is currently in Berlin.
So later today I have got to take my insurance printout, drivers licence and the plastic to the pound in the snow and wind and quite likely lose most of the day.

I have told the garage they will have to shell out for all the direct costs but not my wasted time. Any damage too. They are refusing to do so. Can they ? fwiw the scheduled work has still not been done.

really p-d off. It is not the best of days to risk the desolation of sarf lonnon.

That is one of the joys of living, or working in London. My local council has a couple of small cars with a camera on the roof. All they do all day is drive around catching people illegally parking. In the town fixed cameras catch anyone pulled in to the side of the road and send a fixed penalty parking fine. Even dropping someone off will incur this. Yet nobody seems to get fined for not picking up their dog s**t, or spitting, or littering, even though these incur a fixed penalty of £80. Our borough has the worst fly tipping problem in the country. My house is going on the market in the next month or so.

Surely the garage are responsible for the actions of their apprentice mechanic a) for allowing him to move the cat and B) forleaving the car parked there for that length of time. Are they not insured against this sort of thing? I would think if they get a lot of business from your firm they would pay up to avoid losing custom.

I was thinking that Ann, but what do I know?

Okay I have to ask.....how did the parking guy know the young guy didn't have a full licence??

Why would a garage risk a none licence holder none un-insured person behind the wheel of a car which
1,didnt belong to them,
2.put him at risk of of fines,penalty points on a none existing licence.yet!
3,risk him to an accident,or damage to a vehicle
4,knowigly allow him an (unqualified ) to park in a none parking area.

no reputalbe garage would alllow a prestige car to be driven by anyione unqualified.

load of twaddle.

Morally the garage is at fault, but legally? could you retrospectively claim that you aren’t responsible? It’s a bit like cars being handed over to offsite airport parking. The owners believe they’ll be stored on a secure site, but could end up on a residential road.

Although the apprentice shouldn’t have driven it unsupervised & uninsured, these things happen. I know our learner drivers have had to be involved in shunting cars on & off our drive to let another vehicle out. We also live at the end of a Cul de Sac.

However Det, presumably that is your own cars to are taking risks with, a bit different to a garage taking risks with other peoples' cars.

True, but it’s just an example of what can happen. The Apprentice has probably done the same numerous times before. He wouldn’t have been asked to move the car if they didn’t think he was competent.

Taking care of your car would be implied terms of your contract with the garage I think.

You would think any cost that is the fault of the garage or it's employees is the garage's as far as the customer is concerned as the contract for the work to be done is with the garage.

However, I had a look at this and the bit about offences at the bottom was a revelation to me, as I always thought the driver would be responsible for these fines.

http://www.yourdrivinglicence.co.uk/can-garage-mechanic-drive-car-while-for-repair.html

One of the young customer service lads at my garage had to apologise for not fetching my car from their huge pound to the door for me as he said he was not old enough to be on the company's insurance, even though he would be driving on the company's own land and not going on a public road.

The parking gestapo take full advantage of that but the garage always pays the tickets.

??


surely they have lots of angry car owners who recive a parking fine ,,,,,,,,as it will go to the registered keeper of the car and not the garage ,,,,,even if its in for repairs, the garage have a responsibilty of care.

Name and shame them on social media.

Well, an interesting point re garages/staff and customers cars.

In WA we have so called "hoon" laws covering various offences, one of which is driving at 45 kph above the posted speed limit.the penalty for which is having your car impounded, and possibly crushed.

One guy with a high performance sports car left it at a garage for a service. One mechanic decided to 'road-test' the vehicle and was clocked by the police doing 60 kph over the speed limit.

Even though the owner had not given the garage permission to drive the car, other than for general movement around the garage, he was the one who, under the law, was responsible and his very expensive car was impounded for twenty eight days and copped all the associated costs.

Wonder what happened in the end......

Here's what happened

http://www.news.com.au/national/lamborghini-impounded-under-hoon-laws/news-story/5cdf732cb8cd20f7af5dbff4fe7d38c1

I may have got my speeds wrong in my post, but basically the event panned out as I said

That's okay Allan getting speeds wrong from memory is acceptable. :-)

As for memory, I've just seen the date of the news article..it was just over eight years ago :-S

Time flies when you're having fun! :-D :-D :-D

My time is flying towards oblivion, Maggie, but I'm still enjoying it :-D :-D :-D