{"id":15712,"date":"2024-10-03T18:50:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T17:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=15712"},"modified":"2024-10-03T18:57:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T17:57:17","slug":"vauxhall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=15712","title":{"rendered":"Vauxhall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019t a big bump and left only a small, very minor scuff on my front bumper. She said she\u2019d pay for the repair of any damage. I said I\u2019d think about it (I was busy at the time and didn\u2019t want my head to be in the \u2018car repair space\u2019 instead of where it needed to be).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first thing to report is that Evans Halshaw Vauxhall wanted to charge me \u00a3120 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 \u00a320 for the ‘courtesy car’ and that doesn’t seem like much of a courtesy to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u00a3120 diagnostic fee. All I had to pay was the \u00a320 for the courtesy skateboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15712"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15717,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712\/revisions\/15717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}