Seamer Garage

Atrocious - avoid at all costs

• Value
• Quality
• Service
• Overall

I took my car to the garage yesterday because both my car keys had become loose, turning around and around in the locks/ignition. They quoted me £180 to have two new keys cut plus the labour to "program" them. Despite being extortionate I agreed to pay this, after all I couldn't start the ignition so couldn't drive away from the garage. Today I go to collect my car and new keys and they only give me one new key (at £35) and the receptionist says that they "decided to only go with the one key in the end". I argue that the price is still the same despite one less key but she argued about the cost of the labour and in the end I ended giving in and paid the £180. After looking at the invoice they charged me 2 hours of labour (at £60 an hour) to program my key to my locks. Two hours to program the key! It's an old car and key I have no idea if it even needs programming or not. I'm temped to smash my old key to see if there's a chip in there or something. Looking at the invoice the two hours of labour was also spent trying to figure out why locking/unlocking the driver door doesn't lock/unlock and passenger side and vice versa. This is an issue they discovered after I agreed to pay the £180 for the keys. They concluded it was probably a wiring problem but would have to rip out the dashboard which would be expensive. So they charged me for those two hours of investigative labour despite not fixing anything, despite me not agreeing to pay specifically for this labour. Is that right, can they do that? The description of work done basically says (and I'm paraphrasing) "we thought the problem was with the latch motor so we put a new one in which didn't solve it so we took it back out again and put the old one back in. The problem must lie with the wiring which needs further investigation = 2 hours of labour = £138".

Report this review By Daniel Adams 06/12/2012