Great result AS !
It makes me wonder whether all the technology has made these people totally reliant on what comes up on the screen no matter how ridiculous or unlikely it might be. "If the computer says it's the wotchamacallit it must be the wotchamacallit matey!"
Reminds me of the till girl who told me my basket of goods totalled £9.78 when in fact it contained 4 items each costing £4.99 amongst other things. It's on the screen so it must be correct mustn't it ?
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VW garages are even better, they send your car back with the existing fault plus another to go with it!
My New Passat went in for a knock from the suspension arm, this was repaired, the knock still there but they managed to bust the glove box, back it went, ahh it wasn't a suspension arm knocking, it was a faulty seam in the bulkhead that needed rewelding. Well after 6 weeks they fixed the seam and returned the car, the glove box still bust,took back, a week later retuned, great apart from a burnt passanger door panel, a hole burnt in the drivers seat and burn holes in the carpet they had covered up with a new set of car mats.Now the car is 6 months old it looked fine until i put the lights on, the bulbs in the door panel lights were red and not green as the others, and the windsceen was covered in little black specks were they han been grinding i assume another car. I kept the car 4 years and it was never fixed properly every time another problem.
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They do it because, in the greater majority of cases, they get away with it.
Rgds.
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One particular problem nowadays is that there aren't any mechanics as such - just 'fitters' and to some extent this has been caused by the ridiculous charges for labour and rise in electronic diagnostics. If it's costing £60 or so an hour to work on (say) a failed alternator, it's much more cost effective to sling in a new one in ten minutes.
The problem is, though, that it has engendered a culture where 'throwaway' is acceptable and 'mechanics' seldom get much understanding of the intricacies of components. All too often, garages just keep trying new parts until something works. They (sometimes!) have the luxury of a well stocked stores dept. This makes for laziness.
I also think that manufacturers have got wise to all this and have hiked up the cost of components to offset the reduced labour in 'quick fixes'. In a nutshell, we land up in a lose-lose situation once again!
Just as well that I've got a nice reliable Citroen.........
Graeme
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Time was when mechanics (now that's the proper word) served an apprenticeship of several years, often starting at 15 or so. They would study for their City and Guilds in ther evening. After a good many months cleaning dirty engine bits with Gunk and finding a 7/16" ring spanner for the foreman (And they'd better be quick or they'd feel the toe of his grease soaked boot on their little back-side, along with making endless cups of tea), they might then progress to the job title of "Improver".
Then they might (Under supervision) be allowed to use the gasket cement and be assigned simple tasks like oil changes. They would also get a pay raise from about £4.10.0d a week to £5.0.0d. and would learn a lot of bad language. Their journey to that exalted state of competent tradesman from callow slack-jawed pimply yoof would begin to sppreciate the mystical mechanical ballet of the four stroke engine and the precision of the many pieces which orchestrated the dance, along and some glimmer of understanding of the miracles of the suck-squeeze-bang-blow cycle and the things which had to occur at high speed and with great precision in very specific ways which made it possible.
They had to buy their own tools, oh, yes, and moaned like hell when SAE sizes went the way of metrification (as the word went)and they had to save up for replacements for what had been perfectly good sizes for decades until some idiot accountant at Dagenham decided they were out of fashion.
They imbibed the idiosyncrasies of makes and engines, how to disassemble and reassemble a diff or a Borg-Warner overdrive (try to find someone now who can do that) and to make instant and accurate diagnostics from intimate knowledge of what made 105E and "B" series engines go round. They could tune the twin SU carbs of an MG Magnette with a screwdriver and a piece of neoprene tube stuck in their ear and have it running sweet as a nut. No engine or transmission held any terrors for them and they could confidently reduce the whole to the sum of its parts, then do it in reverse and have the thing out the door behaving like new.
Tools would be revered and treated with humility and respect, cleaned and tidied before the end of each shift. They would not go forth into the workshop with a set of feeler gauges and a torque wrench. The scent of Swarfega would start to ooze from their skin, their nails and the crease of their hands would be permanently black. and by the time they were 21 and showed some degree of promise they would be adept at lapping valves, using engineer's blue and drifting bearings out of housings. When the customer came in they would have learnt sufficient mechanic-speak to impress him with their attention to detail and their ability to confuse him with terms like TDC, micrometer readings and Nyloc nuts. Sometimes they could even fabricate small parts where none were available. They moved in a select world to which only a few were privy, and recorded their days on grease-stained job sheets in impenetrable language which Mrs Perkins in Accounts would tut-tut over she tried to make sense of their arcane heiroglyphics and produce a bill the customer could understand and be persuadeed to pay.
Parts were not thrown away. Once a week the Solex man would come to collect the old part-exchanged carbs, that nice Janice with the great rack (work stopped when she arrived) would take away the box of Ferodo brake shoes for re-lining. Jerry was a dab hand at bending up newe exhaust pipes and welding them into place without the need to fit new systems, worn engine blocks would go away for rebore, crankshafts for remetalling, and Wellworthy oil control rings would be used to get a few more miles from a motor before the customer would have to cough up for an exchange unit. And the crackpots of today talk about recycling! It had been going for years under their pimply noses had they bother to get out of their ivory towers and take a look at the reakl world.
If they were as lucky as my peers, these young striplings would find themselves under the tutelage of a shop foreman like the irascible Jack Durndall, who abused customers roundly on occasions, who had acquired his trade the same way, by virtue of knowing how to use a lathe, and being able to repair the Hamilton Hydromatic propellers on Wellington bombers during sandstorms in Iraq which helped the Royal Air Force to retain its position as the world's finest. Their coming of age would be celebrated when Jack decided it was time to stop yelling at them and giving them a clip round the ear and give them their final rite of passage. Only Jack was allowed this, not the GM or anyone else. They had to match him pint for pint on mild and bitter in the Cissbury Arms and 12 pints and ther ability to hold them in was considered reasonable result. ONly then did they get their pay rise to the new position.
By the time these grizzled survivors had reached 25, they knew what they were about when they reached for the circlip pliers. They were equally at home with a hammer and dolly on a dented panel then a spray-gun as they were using taps and dies or turning up a new part on a lathe.
They were men among men and they knew it. They did good work, and achieved that special status with the customer on the same terms as his doctor, his lawyer and his banker. When Jack passed on I heard his wife received a large number of tributes and expressions of sympathy from all those customers who had endured the rough edge of his sharp tough all those years but knew that when Jack's lads fixed something it stayed fixed.
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Hi guys. Few typos there: it was Big G on the red jungle juice in the bar last night.
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nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
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Precisely the same thing is happening with computer retail and repairs now.
I suppose it should be funny that someone who clearly doesn't know his RAM from the hole in his posterior should try to sell me a cosmic panacea in PCI form, especially when he doesn't actually know any more about the product that I've just learned from reading the blurb on the box. I'm talking about the sort of smartassed wet-behind-the-ears spotty little herbert who only bought a computer in the first place because he though a CD-ROM was a smutty video...
This is the sort of person who will openly and aggressively contradict something you know to be the case because you've personally experienced it for the last 2 years, simply because Baz in the goods department heard it from his mate in the pub and so it must be true. The sort of person who drools over the amount of megatexels the latest all-singing, all-dancing graphics card can push without actually knowing what a texel *is*.
Of course, the most annoying aspect of these creatures is their blunt refusal to accept that there might actually be something wrong with the product you're returning. They naturally jump to the conclusion that you must be doing something wrong and point to everything from power surges to fluctuations in the space/time continuum and the position of Venus in the night sky. When they do finally concede that you're right, they offer you another choice from the (generally pathetic) selection of leftovers on the shelf, presumably under the impression that you would have chosen something different in the first place if you'd have just thought about it a bit more...
But the final nail in the coffin is when you ask a simple question about something and they either:
a) Read the back of the box in an authorative tone of voice whilst mispronouncing most of it and clearly understanding even less, and then fix you with a meaningful look to suggest that they knew that anyway
or
b) Just make something up.
I actually spent 5 min explaining to one of the aforementioned herberts in PC world the difference between types of memory so that he could attempt to pull the right type off the shelf behind him. When the price turned out to be around twice that of the unbranded variety, his explanation was that 'this one has a leaflet telling you how to install it..'.
Gah, it makes the blood boil - people don't seem to realise that when they hire someone who knows what they're doing for the job, they're not only getting commitment and ability, but also a huge catalgue of knowledge that'll sort of most problems far faster that a muppet with a copy of Norton. We're talking being able to tell from across the room that a hard drive was made by Seagate just by the sound, about precisely why you can get rid of almost all the startup items from older ATI cards because they generally only crash anyway.. There's far more to it than just knowing a few acronyms and spending too much time locked away in dark rooms with only Lara Croft and your right hand for company ;)
TBH, there are many parallels now between the computer and motor trades - large scale companies shifting units rather than tailoring solutions, and lacking the technical expertise to support their customers after the fact.
Anyway.. what was that about cars?... ;)
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Oh what happy days, Growler!
Washing hands in the communal cold water bucket & no fancy gloves to wear.
Balancing the SU's on an A110 Westminster, good for a weekend or fresh tank of petrol, whichever came first.
Stepping off the hoist and forgetting your oppo had raised it three feet just after you got on.
Being almost reduced to tears trying to fit a new tubeless Mini tyre with just a couple of levers and a gob of Swarfega.
Serving petrol in all weathers on a forecourt with no canopy.
Having shoot-outs with the Redex guns.
Watching 'regulars' serving themselves with the nozzle in one hand and the other hand behind their back, with lit fag.
Filling the forecourt Castrol bottles at the start of the shift.
Having someone drive in for fuel just after taking meter readings, locked the pumps and switched all off.
Getting abuse from customers when you point out that the canvas showing through their tyre(s) might not be very safe "you on commission then mate?"
Daily collection of petrol caps placed on roof/boot whilst filling, and not replaced.
People turning up for two pints of petrol in a lemonade bottle.
Happy days?
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>>>Washing hands in the communal cold water bucket & no fancy gloves to wear.
Frostbite I wanted to say that but couldn't recall, now you've reminded me.
Rozalex was the barrier cream???
Perhaps only happier days seen through the rose tinted glasses of yesteryear, but those guys knew what they were about. I did. I mean if I fixed something for a customer and he didn't like it it was my ass on the line and so it should have been (I was a hotshot on Zenith carbs by the way, especially the IV). The point I wanted to make was the personal side where your mechanic knew you and you him. Nostalgia? Sure, seen from nowadays, but Bert or Pete or Terry was responsible for the work he did on my car. I knew that, he knew that, if it didn't work I'd be back.
Why don't we have an expert
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Rozalex was the barrier cream???
Bit posh in your place! Something we only heard about, never saw.
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LOL: not to mention quad Green Shield stamps from German tourists in their big Mercs who didn't want them so you stuffed them in your back pocket and furnished the living room in your flat when you got enough. I lusted after one of those lava lamps and it took me ages to save up enough stamps and take 'em to the Brighton Green Shield shop.
How about the times you topped up the customer's oil and left a bit in the bottom of the container, drained it, and collected enough to charge for a pint which was "yours" then splitting it amongst the lads? Don't tell me you didn't, because no one in the trade will believe you.
Oh yes, putting those 520/13's on those damn Minis. Especially on Fridays after lunch when it was payday and you'd been in the Queens Arms, if you take my meaning.
But this is not the thread's topic. I think we all yearn for technicians who know their business, understand our wants and needs, empathise with us and can fix stuff. One of the benefits of living in poorer countries like the Philippines is that the genre is alive and well. Bong-Bong down the road can fix it and if he can't his brother's nephew's cousin will. But send your wife or girlfriend otherwise you get charged foreigner price.
Life is good.
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volvoman - as you seem very concerned about this, what are you going to do about it?
The answer to your question "why do garages do this?" is "Because you let them".
Note: {P} - indicates that I am advertising that my profile can be viewed.
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eMBe - The answer to your question "why do garages do this?" is "Because you let them".
No, its not like this at all. It is more difficult than ever for the individual to complain about bad service. In some parts of the country the large dealer groups have an effective monopoly, you would have to drive miles to reach an alternative dealer. They have a stranglehold on the supply of parts and service information and *you* have more to lose than they do, should you get into a dispute with them.
The only answer is legislation - complete opening up of the parts supply and servicing market; a complete end to 'block exemption'. The current regime of restrictive practicies are not in the consumers' interests.
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Hi eMBe, what would I do about it ? I'd never be in that position 'cos I'd never run a new and expensive car which mattered that much. It must run in the family 'cos I've got 2 millionaire brothers neither of whom gives a fig about the supposed pose factor of cars or all the technical stuff people like JC get off on. Car dealers make only slightly more out of me than credit card companies - I've got no debts and pay them no interest. If everyone was the same and brand image was less important than it appears to be many of these companies would have to improve of go bust. Having lost one wife however, I prefer to spend my time worrying about the woman I love and my children and cars come a wel down the rankings. Having said all of that, if I did own a new motor and did suffer like some here I'd create the sort of stink you get when you come across a recently expired camel in the desert - not very pleasant I can assure you ! You're right to imply that society get the dealers it deserves and I share your view that people need to complain louder and far more effectively than they do. Anyway I'm off now to celebrate anniverary #3 with Mrs V.
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