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Small problem made worse by garage - should they pay for repairs?

The steering belt on my eight year old Volvo XC90 went recently whilst I was driving. I pulled over and had the car towed to a local garage. I asked the garage to check why the belt had failed, rather than just fixing it and fitting a new one.

I collected my car and the garage said there was no pretensioner and that it was a quick job (costing £130). Later I got a call saying after 15 mins of running the engine, the new steering belt had snapped due to the pretensioner bearing in the distributor. So now I have to pay for another new steering belt, distributor, new cambelt (which was just replaced 3-4 months ago at about £400 btw) and some seal, now costing me £1600.

This has financially crippled us (the car is ready to be collected and paid for) but it feel like if they had checked the reason for the belt going as suggested, they could have avoided all this. Do I need to pay for this? What’s the best course of action? I'm happy to meet them half way on the cost if needed but it does seem like their negligence?

Asked on 2 June 2014 by Chit

Answered by Honest John
Suggest to the garage that you sort out the matter of payment in the small claims track of the county court. This will mean paying them to get the car back, then suing for the return of part of the money afterwards. But you need to get your facts and terminology correct. No such thing as a distributor. You might mean alternator.
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