Guest Rant No. 2

A special guest rant from NRB...

Thought you may like to put this on your blog.....I recently took my car into Evans Halshaw in St. Albans for some "minor" work. Please bear in mind that my car is a "Y" reg worth about £1,500. About an hour after dropping my car off, I received a phone call stating that I needed "additional" work doing on my car to make it safe and so it would pass it's "MOT" which was due in a couple of months. Amongst some other (non-MOT related issues), they found the following;o/s front coilspring broken - £364.55n/s read coilspring broken - £281.45Grand total : £646.00 (which I think included VAT)The non-MOT related issues would have cost me another £719.19. There were additional costs that were not MOT related issues.Now, I took it into a "local" mechanic to get it MOT'd today and all they picked up were the coil springs which cost me £42 & £40 for the coilsprings and about £50 to get it fitted (it was a little more than that, but included another minor piece of work that needed doing, which came to £70 in total). So, my point is that for the same work - replacing the coilsprings, Evans Halshaw wanted a total of £646.00 whereas a local garage charged me £106.26, including VAT. So, Evans Halshaw were going to charge me more than 600% more than the "local" guy ! How can they justify such grossly inflated prices. So much for getting "value" from the big-named garages.Ignore me if you like, but I thought it might make a good entry.

Rant over.