Potential Accident After Main Dealer Service

[Guest selfhelp]

I recently had all brake pads changed on my galaxy (Thursday 12th), when driving away from the main dealer my wife flashed me and advised they felt spongy and not right (As she drives the Galaxy) I was tempted to return to the main dealer but time was pressing and I said to her it may well be the pads bedding in. On the friday my wife advised me she was driving over to her aunties and the brake pedal travelled fully to the floor. I took the galaxy out Saturday morning, returned and reversed up into our drive (which is on a mild gradient) and pulled the handbrake on and went into the house. My wife put my daughter who's 9 into the car and left the rear offside door open while she returned to the house to collect some items, she came out of the house to find the Galaxy in the middle of the road i.e. the car had travelled slowly down our drive (with our daughter in) the door had been caught by the concrete post that support one of our gates and closed the door (Door now damaged)

Thank god we live in a quiet cul de sac and don't front a main road. What should I do. The main dealer who are fairly reputable have advised me to bring it back in and they will hold their hands up and repair the door if they are at fault, but being in business myself for a good number of years (and perhaps somewhat hard nosed) I feel what I should be doing is getting an independent report (perhaps from a mobile mechanic or AA, if I leave it too long the main dealer will get suspicious), the problem I then have is that if someone else checks the brakes any warranty is invalidated (The main dealer, of course, do not need to know of the independent inspection)

I would welcome any advice as now is sunday evening and they're expecting me to drop the car in tomorrow dinnertime. I'm in Bath/South West by the way.
Kind Regards
Martyn

[Ivor_E_Tower]

I'm no legal expert but I think you have 2 basic choices - (1) go along tomorrow and insist that you speak to someone senior at the garage and remain on-site to observe what they do and what they find, or (2) get an independent examination done and a report written which you can then use as leverage to get the garage to fix the faults - assuming that this is what the independent report will find. If the garage seem quite genuinely concerned, then I would suggest that option (1) is better bet. Glad to hear that nobody was hurt - and don't forget to always leave the car in gear when you park it - especially a Galaxy as it has rear discs and apparently no separate drums for the handbrake - the handbrake apparenlty works by applying the rear pads to the discs, and as the pads cool down after a journey, they relax their grip and are less effective. A chap who services CMM machines who visits a company I used to work for had a similar thing happen when he let his wife borrow his Alhambra - he always left in in gear, she didn't. He had a downward sloping driveway and was able to watch in horror as his wife got out of the car and slammed the door, that it slowly rolled down his driveway and into his house......

[iainkirk]

Definitely dealer liability here...and I wouldn't accept a ford Ka(k) as the courtesy car whilst they've got your Galaxy.

Only a top of the range Galaxy or Mondeo will suffice, supplied with a full tank of fuel by a grovelling senior manager at the dealership. If the dealer considers that to be unreasonable, ask them to provide what their senior managers drive.

and the next service at

[Purple Peril]

How did it go???

[Guest selfhelp]

Thanks for input and advice/help, the garage were brilliant and handled it all with integrity and professionalism and no questions asked. While, of course, not admitting liability the door was made good and looks like new, brakes also feel and respond much better. So a very happy conclusion, I feel I must also mention garage... Reed of Trowbridge, Wiltshire. So anyone in the area these guys are highly recommended.
Thanks again
Martyn

[delboyt]

how can you reccomend a garage that's got incompitent people (mech) there
you would not be saying that if your child was hurt.
i hope they gave you some form of compensation for all the hasstle you had whils it was being sorted
atleas a full refund for the brakes they ofiginally fitted

[johnb80]

How many people can do their daily job without ever making a mistake ? Yes the potential from this one was huge BUT in the event no-one was hurt thank god. One thing for sure is that this garage and the mechanic involved will be very vigilant on this sort of thing in the future. I run a business and my engineers do make mistakes from time to time, they know that I don't come down on them too hard if they're honest and up front. We always try to put the matter right to the customers satisfaction and a little more, one of our bigger customers (a multi-million pound global company) told me personally that things not working correctly didn't go against us too much but our response to the problems put us right to the top of their preffered suppliers list.
Soooo, yes I would be happy to recommend them if treated correctly when a problem arose, I would also shout from the rooftops and take them to court if they didn't look after me when they'd made an error.

Regards - John

[Guest fredt]

Very true, a few years back a company I worked for hired a management consultant to work out where the company was going wrong! the work force could have told them and done it a lot cheaper
one of the consultants pearls of wisdom was that if a company makes a cock up, but then puts it right the customer is more likely to remember the effort put into fixing the problem and is therefore more likely to use the same company again and recomend them to others the out come of this peice of infomation resulted in the formation of a quick response team to put the problems right when they occurred!
in my present job I am my own quality inspector and have to test and sign off all my own installations, and funnily enough I dont have any failures or bad installs

[vRS Binz]

Ooooo another hazard potential by a main dealer service.
My family 2.3 Zetec Galaxy went into the local dealer for its final warranty service (40k), they fitted new front brakes, I had to take it back 3 days later when the car started to squeel really badly had had trouble stopping, the brakes went spongey.............. damn mechanic failed to notice the rear pads had worn to bone. neadless to say its been back 4 times since then, and they still haven't serviced it to my satisfaction.

I wanted the car serviced before handing it to my wife so that she could ferry my priceless children around and I could buy another plaything.

Was going to buy another ford............. but they're salesmanship and stock was on par with the service department.

Be safe, always check after main dealer service, in the days of Dick Turpin they called it highway robbery!

[Justice]

My input is, Would you have been so happy to accept that they put everything right if you had of lived on a main road .(my daughter means everything to me so even if nothing happened the fact that it could of is enough)
The idea of taking it to a garage is that the mechanics should know what they are doing and apart from that the first thing the mechanic should have done was to take the car out on a road test to check the brakes him/herself.
One saving grace is, this person is in a garage and not a mechanic for an airline.

I have fitted hundreds of brakes to cars and vans and use to service a fleet of taxi's but I would never let a car out of the garage until it had ben road tested by myself or a qualified mechanic. I think you let them off lightly .

[Ogben Schmutzel]

.... and its just about living on a main road. In quite cul-de-sac's children may be playing in areas that they would not on a main road with the obvious dangers if cars start rolling off on their own!

Vehicles should always be tested after such work and that it either was done so incompetently or not do at all is a major factor IMHO.

I accept that the way that mistakes are remedied are a good measure of customer care but not of technical competence and professionalism.

Did you know that it is a fact that more customer loyalty is gained by recovering from disaster with excellence that just doing what it says on the tin all the time?

Not fair is it!!

Oggy.

[steve67car]

i believe that if the job was done correctly in the first place the accident would not have happened and you would have not given the garage a second thought
but it did happen the garage were correct to remedy the fault and the way that is done has left you with a opinion that they are a good garage
and it is ture that how they correct a fault is more important than the fault its self cause as humaans we are not always perfect[ unless your a woman so they think?]
if there had been a major incedent from this then and only then do we look at it differently as we should judge every thing on its own merits and not on a what if
good call selfhelp

[Guest vr6galaxy]

ooh from reading that Steve I sense you screwed up at work again! not set another customers car on fire again have we but very true it's how the company reacts and deals with the problem that most people remember and will bring them back as repeat customers

[Scorpiorefugee]

I am totally with Johnb80 on this. This world is getting too legislation crazy. The only people to benefit from any legal action are the legal profession as any money or benefits won inevitably come from the customer, if not you, then the next guy and the lawyers get more than anyone.

As for what might have happened. The driver must take some share of the responsibilty for not returning with a potentially dangerous car. I appreciate that this could have been a difficult call but I am sure that the garage would have not knowingly let you go with a dangerous vehicle and you alone was aware of the problem. I congratulate you on giving the garage an oportunity to react without added aggrevationand I am sure that they will remember that on your next visit.

Irrespective of alloocating blame, we should all learn from mistakes, even those made by others and may I join with all others to share relief that your daughter escaped injury. I've had a similar experience and that relief puts all other issues out of sight.

Ron.

[galaxy_1.9TD_Zetec]

Hi,

My main dealer gave me a clanger of a problem to deal with - I had an MOT fail for a track rod end. Removed old one, had to hacksaw off the stem from the ball joint as the nut was seized.

Left the Galaxy on jacks in the garage, trundled along to main dealer (Central Scotland) to get a replacement. None in SCotland - will get overnight from soemwhere in England. Tried halfords, but similar. Fair enough, ordered from main dealer, gauranteed to be in by 10am next day. (I was flying to Ireland that afternoon, so the pick up of the part and the fitting and re-test of MOT all had about 3 hrs total - thought it was do-able).

So, what went wrong ?

Well, the part, costing

[Bigjeeze]

[quote name='galaxy_1.9TD_Zetec' date='Apr 15 2006, 22:51:19'] Hi,

My main dealer gave me a clanger of a problem to deal with - I had an MOT fail for a track rod end. Removed old one, had to hacksaw off the stem from the ball joint as the nut was seized.

Left the Galaxy on jacks in the garage, trundled along to main dealer (Central Scotland) to get a replacement. None in SCotland - will get overnight from soemwhere in England. Tried halfords, but similar. Fair enough, ordered from main dealer, gauranteed to be in by 10am next day. (I was flying to Ireland that afternoon, so the pick up of the part and the fitting and re-test of MOT all had about 3 hrs total - thought it was do-able).

So, what went wrong ?

Well, the part, costing

[Masked Marauder]

The parts catalogue shows the nut as a separate part and gives it's size as M12 with a 1.5mm thread pitch, which is as standard as they come, I have a box full of those.

[Ivor_E_Tower]

Bizarely sort-of-on-topic.....had to cjeck on M12 thread sizes at work yesterday afternoon; M12 x 1.75 is the "norm", but M12 x 1.5, M12 x 1.25, M12 x 1 are all available

[Masked Marauder]

M12x1.5 are

[steve67car]

on the