Vauxhall

A couple of weeks ago the lady who lives diagonally opposite our house knocked on our door to tell me she had accidentally reversed her car into mine. It wasn’t a big bump and left only a small, very minor scuff on my front bumper. She said she’d pay for the repair of any damage. I said I’d think about it (I was busy at the time and didn’t want my head to be in the ‘car repair space’ instead of where it needed to be).

But later that day, when I got in the car, the dashboard presented a message I’d never seen before: ‘Service Parking Assist’ it said. I cancelled the alert but the next time I started up the same message appeared. And the time after that. And after that (etc).

So I took the car to the local friendly garage who plugged in a device, read the fault code and said the parking sensor (very close to the point of impact) was registering as non-responsive. Then he said that if I needed a new parking sensor it would need spraying because they only come in primer. I thought about it for a moment then said I’d take it to our local Vauxhall main dealer (Evans Halshaw, Nottingham) and let them look at it.

The first thing to report is that Evans Halshaw Vauxhall wanted to charge me £120 to ‘do the diagnostics’ (look at the car and plug in a machine to read the fault code?). Huh. The second thing to report is Vauxhall charged me £20 for the ‘courtesy car’ and that doesn’t seem like much of a courtesy to me.

Anyway.

Evans Halshaw Vauxhall and I made the booking and a couple of weeks later I dropped the car off, picked up the courtesy skateboard and came back home. Mid-afternoonish I had the call and this is what Evans Halshaw Vauxhall said:

The front bumper had been resprayed and the paint over the
parking sensor was too thick. I needed to book the car into
their bodyshop for remedial action.

There’s just one thing wrong with this ‘diagnosis’ and you can probably guess what I’m going to say. I’ve owned this car from brand-spanking new. The car has never had the front bumper resprayed. And when I say never I mean never not ever.

I told the person on the phone all this. She said she was only relaying what their mechanic had told them. I said I understood that, but the message I was being given was complete rubbish. She asked if I could get there before 5pm so I could meet the mechanic. I jumped in the courtesy skateboard and got there at 4pm.

I talked with the person who had called me, she went out to the workshop and came back a few minute later saying she was unable to find the mechanic so we went out to inspect the bumper. I got down on my knees and closely inspected the bumper and saw no likely respray. Also the sensor didn’t look resprayed. I pointed to a small scratch a little further along the bumper (I think I got cruised by a bad parker in Morrisons car park) and said ‘If I’d had the bumper resprayed, I would have had that taken care of wouldn’t I?’ She agreed.

We went back inside and she tried to find the mechanic again. They couldn’t be found. But she did come back with a bonus. She’s spoken with someone in the workshop who had agreed to waive the £120 diagnostic fee. All I had to pay was the £20 for the courtesy skateboard.

Today I rang another local service garage and explained the problem. They said they couldn’t help but gave me the name and number of an automotive electronic/electrician person. I called him, explained the problem. He said there was a possibility the bump had trapped a cable or maybe even snapped a cable. He said he’d come out, take the front off the car and look at what needed to be done. So he’s coming out in a week. We’ll see what he finds/discovers but my money is on him finding nothing to do with a front bumper respray or a parking sensor clogged with paint.

2 thoughts on “Vauxhall

  1. The problem with modern day mechanics, is that they rely too much on that diagnostic laptop.
    My current car – years ago – developed an intermittent fault with the power steering. I took it to my local Ford dealer, they plugged in the laptop and after several minutes informed me that I needed a whole new steering rack – as the power steering mechanism had failed and is built into it. This would cost 800 quid plus labour. Luckily for me, the car was still within warranty.
    They ordered the new rack and spent several hours fitting it, only for the fault to still be there when they took it out for a test drive.
    Further investigation found it was just a loose wire in the fuse box.

    It’ll be interesting to learn what your new man finds.

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