What would you do? Mechanic/garage content

As much a rant to get it off my chest as after advice be ause I'm at breaking point.

Just over a year ago my car developed a fault, - when accelerating the engine/front of car would wobble and vibrate for a few seconds as you got speed up.
Rac came out at night, couldnt find anything obvious, only thing found was a fault code for a dodgy deisel injector, (said no idea if that's the problem but maybe if an injector isn't working it would put the engine out of balance and cause the vibration - sounded remotely plausible) but as it was driveable said get it to your garage to take a look.

Take it to garage who I've always used for this car and seemed ok, they said yeah needs new no.4 injector. So I gave the go ahead, then after they fitted it , called and said oh it didn't fix the problem, it's your CV joint gone.!
So I'm thinking wtf, but hey ho it said the injector was dodgy so suck it up. £600 spent ,500 for the Injector, 100 for CV.

4 months on, Saturday night, car breaks down. Horrendous fumes in car, runs and sounds like a bag of spanners. Rac come out and identify that no. 4 injector clamp has snapped and Injecttor is flapping around,. I'm peed off.

Monday morning call the garage owner/mechanic up and explain what's happened, (this guy is normally pretty friendly and helpful) and the guy goes absolutely mental. He's blaming me for telling him to fit the wrong injector, he's blaming the rac because "they're a bunch of f****g clueless idiots, he's blaming the injector clamp because "they fail all the time", he rants on and on until I have a go at him, and he agrees to sort it out.
I go to pick the car up, he chucks the keys at me and says yeah we forgot to fit the injector guide.
That's it. No apology for his rant. No apology for his crap work, or my inconvenience, or the fact I've driven for 4 months with incorrectly fitted injector.

Mental note not to take my business there again.

Fast forward until a few weeks ago, now just over a year since injector replaced, I'm suspicious car is running a bit off again, sure I can smell fumes again, suspect a similar problem again, I'm getting peed off and find a local garage with a really good reputation , they agree to take a look. So this week they have it, tell me it needs no.4 and no.2 injector replacing. Im angry but again I suck it up, want it sorted out properly so £700 spent.

So driving around the next day or two I'm thinking It seems to run a bit better but I'm certain I can still smell fumes in the cabin, maybe it's an exhaust leak. But surely the guy who just worked on it would of noticed this??
So I go to an exhaust place who have a look and say no your exhaust is fine, the fumes are coming from here somewhere - pointing at the injectors area - not our type of work, go and see "Mr Mechanic" at "garage down the road",.

Getting to my wit's end now, so drive down the road to this newly recommended garage, I tell the guy the issue without mentioning anything about injectors having been replaced and he says well that sounds like your injectors, let's take a quick look. As soon as he gets the cover off the engine he says well that's not right, look at the state of that , that shouldn't be like that, while pointing at the injectors, Jesus the fumes are bad. Definitely an injector issue. Hang on, has someone been working on this ?

So I say funny you should say that.....

He proceeds to show and describe to me what the problems are, there's diesel and carbon all around the injectors, no.4 is not seated correctly, etc etc., And describes what needs to be done and what parts to sort it out. One time use stretch bolts which have been reused, clearly not new.so need replacing, Seating the injectors properly with new copper seals, which hasn't been done . Etc etc.
be about £250 -£300 for him to sort it out , happy to do it but quite rightly says I should return to who just did this.....

So what the hell do I do now?
What would you do?
Would you want the same garage "rectifying" appalling work they did?
Request a refund?
i was going to request money back from the original garage, now I don't know who the hell I should request money back from, who I should let loose on my car, or whether just go on a rampage with a baseball bat and cause them both some financial loss to make myself better.

 

So I've now spent £1200 on injector work and the cars in worse condition than it was in the beginning.
I could had the lot done at a main dealer for less than that and had it done properly.

 

Just suck it up, Jez. You’re unlikely to get anywhere with the guy who fixed it imho, but you can call him and recite a list of his f-ups, then point out he’s an arse.

“Lovely friendly local mechanics” are best avoided in my experience, especially on modern cars. They may not have the kit, or the knowledge, or maybe just…don’t care. Best suited to fixing old Ford Escorts.

 

This ^^^

 

That's the thing though the original garage are an independent Volvo place, with all the kit and always been good.
The second garage have an extremely good reputation but not Volvo specific.

I asked the latest guy if the problems he immediately identified would be obvious to any decent mechanic and he said yes.
So basically they just don't give a f** and average Joe gets ripped off over and over again

 

Sounds about right, unfortunately. Odd that the second guy got shirty with you for no reason.

 

Take it to his premises...

and set fire to it....

 

Modern cars need to go to a dealers for work.

Then when they mess up you need to email the CEO and tell him to put it right please.
Worked for me in Guernsey as they flew out a field technician to sort out programming a replacement key.
Bloke came in on the red-eye and had it sorted by 10. Rest of the day sightseeing.

 

Everything you’ve just talked about makes sense to me. I’ve seen it all many times.
Ive seen injectors replaced for a wobble under acceleration that’s turned out to be cv joints.
I’ve seen injectors fitted incorrectly, brackets snapped and old copper seals used.
This has all been at main dealers.
The problem is trying to find a decent mechanic who actually cares. They do exist. I know a few and like to think I’m one.
More worryingly main dealers DO rip people off

 

Unfortunately this story is all to common and is why I do all the work myself on our cars

 

Apart from the shoddy service you've had, I'd say that that kind of bill total isn't that unusual for a modern car and I'd always heard that Volvo's are dear to maintain?

I think we all try to avoid main dealerships but from my experience the local garages are flat out and difficult to book in at short notice.

We've just sold a Fiat 500 that had the Dualogic semi automatic gearbox develop a hydraulic unit failure.
Effectively a non-maintainable item that no gearbox specialist would touch. So Fiat had to do it.

First quote with the obligatory diagnostics was a fiver under £2000........

But the advantage of main dealers is the opportunity to ask for good will. Fiat UK agreed to discount the part and the dealer agreed to charge us the reduced warranty labour rate.

Final bill was £970.

Having full service history helped, but the car was six years old and on 71,000 miles.

I can't fault that.

 

If you want my advice, it will be £450.00

 

Modern car fault diagnostic is not that straightforward & some small garages struggle.
Some will just use a generic code reader and replace parts without doing any in-depth diagnosis. Not even checking simple things like voltages & cable/component resistances etc.
Main dealer labour rates tend to be higher but the cost of training their technicians to a decent standard plus the cost of special tooling & diagnostic equipment all have to be factored in.

 

Well some of that has reassured me in a backwards way.
Still leaves a bitter taste though.
Ive neither the time or knowledge to fart around trying to fix a modern car myself, I know even less about them than I do crappy old VW's.

 

You’re not alone. I hate modern stuff as well. Better to stick to crusty 70s technology.

Did you ever get your van going again?

 

There is a garage here that will just chuck parts at it if you want the number, well thats what they did to my sprinter. The reason I took it in was suspected head gasket. They changed water pump, thermostat, then wanted to change the heater matrix so I went and got it. Took it to a couple of lads who just started on their own and had been working on all the Sainsburys and Tesco Sprinters at their last place. They did the head gasket, had head skimmed, new glow plugs while in bits and chain tensioner.

£1100 bill for fixing it against £450 for replacing parts that were ok....

 

I’m not keen on the modern stuff either, probably because it’s my job on a daily basis
Cut my teeth in the 70s as an apprentice so quite enjoy working on the van.
However out of work I avoid messing with cars.

Bikes though are a different subject

 

This is known as 'parts darts'.

 

No haven't touched it for about 2 years, still in bits from the starting the beam replacement, just haven't had time