Garage woes

Athenia I am so sorry for your loss, and it does make everything seem so much worse. But I too would have been furious with the garage, that is just shoddy workmanship. And the mechanic was rude walking away! I would find yourself a different garage for your next service.

B9exchange, thank you for your kind words.
I have no intention of ever returning there, even if the engine cover comes off again.
If necessary, I will buy a new one and have it replaced.
It really upset me today, as the death of my ex-husband, even after over twenty years of being divorced from him, seemed to throw my own life into question.
He was a classical narcissist, and our long marriage was a pretence in which I suffered greatly.
His death made me wonder, was my suffering worthwhile, as of course, it did not change him one jot.
I am having to work hard on reassuring myself that I have nothing to regret, as I was the best wife and mother I could be.
Yet the years of emotional abuse took their toll, and I suffered for the following twenty years after the divorce from depression, for six months of every year. Apparently, it was caused by the long years of always being on high alert in the marriage, and is actually a form of PTSD.
I have only been free of this for the last two years and seven months.
At 72, I have gone through a long period of forgiveness, in order not to become embittered.
I now aim to live my life to the full.

I would report the garage to trading standards.

Engine covers do fail! Mine did without any previous input from a garage or anything I’d done. It dropped down during a reasonably long journey to visit a cousin who made a temporary fix until I could get to my garage.
It could have been coincidental that yours failed just after servicing because I’m not sure it would have been “interfered” with as part of a service? Why would the engineer have to touch it during a service which as far as I know is done from the top of the engine cavity under the bonnet.
My garage managed to fix my engine cover back into place without any issues but if necessary I would have replaced it. Job done.

Sorry for how your bereavement has affected you Athenia. You sound like a very strong lady even if you don't feel like that at the moment or very often.
My cover has fallen off twice now in the last few months - off completely at the moment i think i am going to find out about a new one.
But i agree it is a horrible feeling when you get ripped off cos you are a lone female.

Bad treatment by garages is part of life. Most of my life I have had good garages, but one car I had, I took the car in and it was returned with none of the wheel nuts other than lightly hand-screwed on. A wheel could have fallen off at any moment. Fortunately the wheels were making a funny noise, so I stopped. The next garage I took the same car too, it was returned with the steering wheel not properly fitted I found this out on the fast lane on the motorway. I managed to get across to the hard shoulder and call the AA. Both these events happened despite being married and my DH being known to each garage and known to understand cars.

When you are a lone woman it is to easy to always think you are being treated badly because you are a woman. Such garages will treat all their customers, male or female, just the same if they think they can get away with it.

Go to a garage that offers fixed price servicing, extras should be authorized before fitting, men get ripped off just as much.
If you go to a garage and they say the brakes are unsafe and need replacing, ask for cost, if you think it’s too much go elsewhere.
If it fails the MOT it gets difficult because then you have to get it fixed and take it back to the same garage. No easy option I’m afraid.

We bought a year old car two years ago and took out a service plan with the dealer. We pay a monthly amount and when the car needs to be serviced or MOT’d we pay very little. Last June it was due a MOT for the first time and all we paid was the standard charge for an MOT. In the past we used various garages, usually based on recommendations from other people which admittedly was cheaper than using the dealer but when our last car developed a fault which was a known fault the dealer charged us to put it right and said if we had used them for regular services they would have done it free of charge. Another benefit of using the dealer is that they come and pick up the car and return it and return it cleaned. As we are 78 this year and do very low mileage this will probably be our last car so this service plan and an extended warranty makes sense for us.

Just a tip, if your car is going into a garage for repair, take the locking wheel nut key out of the car before you leave it with them.
DD had her car serviced some years ago, it was some time after that we noticed that the locking wheel nuts had been removed from her tyres and the key was missing from her glove box.
DH went to the garage and demanded that they get replacements, rather shamefaced they agreed.
It’s a pity that you can’t trust some garages these days.

Going to any garage triggers anxiety so really understand how you feel...my teenager car needs new brake pads front and rear but local garages have no availability at present to book in till October..another fallout of Covid with people being sick/pinged..for isolation..

Unfortunately both the garages that left me driving a car that was totally unsafe were main dealers, not only that, but a letter to the car manufacturers office in London received a reply that showed complete indifference to the danger my life was put in.

When we move anywhere new, we try several garages before settling for one. We have found that once we have found a garage we like and like the staff then we stick with them and we get excellent service. We have been in our current house for 25 years and with our current garage for 24, we were even invited to the proprietors wedding!

Athenia
I’m very sorry for the experience you had.
Over 20 years ago I seriously looked at opening a garage but only manned by females mechanics.
I realised that this was/is a serious problem because of listening to female friends.
I’m lucky that there’s not much that my partner can’t fix on a car. He has to because he drives a car built in 1937.

We’re fortunate, we have a friend, a mechanic, who looked after our cars, reliable and reasonable. But my new last year car will be going back to the dealer for its first service, ??

Sadly, few people ever do their job properly. maybe down to pressure to get on with the next job.
The under shield would have had to be removed to give access to the sump plug to drain the oil.
Quite a few cars can be seen with the undershield dragging along the road, or hanging down, so, no consolation, but you are not alone.
If you find a good garage, stick with them.
Beware of the ones who can always find some work that needs to be done. A neighbour had his company car as part of his redundancy deal. the dealer who had done all the servicing told him "You need new discs" "Funny, you replaced those at the last company service" "Oh, so we did"