944 final bill

porscheman944 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 11:56 am

J.J. wrote:

porscheman944 wrote:

Sean Smallman wrote:

What did they actually do to the car?

Quite a long list- service, throttle position sensor,fuel line,fuel return line,fuel hose, cv boot kits, anti roll bar bush, rear axle mounting brackets , fuel pipe, fuel line rear, fuel pipe adaptor, + nuts, washers, clamps.

labour 27 hrs
£60 hr

Ouch. Thats pretty minor. Taking the piss most certainly. More than three times what you should have paid in my book. Wouldn't use them again if i were you. Biggest bill I ever got was around that amount but included a new clutch & engine overhaul with a gas flowed head & a pair of new drive shafts. They replace the fuel line along with the brake pipe included in that. Enjoy your S2. But find a decent mechanic or DIY. :idea:

Would be cheaper to put it on a trailer & have it taken to JMG at those prices!!! Feel sorry for you. Once bought a stolen car from a franchised dealer. So I know what it feels like to be shafted.

27 hours. Did the mechanic fall asleep????? Go back & shout a bit. Thats not reasonable.

Taking the piss you got that right, was looking to pay around £1,500...no chance of me ever using PETER CHAMBERS again, and having the car from July to mid Sept not the way to treat a new customer, will take your advice .

They did all that work then had 2 advisories on mot

porscheman944 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 12:03 pm

tr7v8 wrote:

porscheman944 wrote:

Sean Smallman wrote:

What did they actually do to the car?

Quite a long list- service, throttle position sensor,fuel line,fuel return line,fuel hose, cv boot kits, anti roll bar bush, rear axle mounting brackets , fuel pipe, fuel line rear, fuel pipe adaptor, + nuts, washers, clamps.

labour 27 hrs
£60 hr

They obviously went by the book to replace the fuel lines which is insane! That is why the labour is so incredible. There are various ways of doing the job & they did the most expensive. I'd avoid them in future, especially if they don't communicate.

Totally agree with you, there is no chance of me ever using PETER CHAMBERS again

porscheman944 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:55 pm

jmgarage wrote:

You know sometimes I think I am doing something very wrong... Othertimes I think maybe I am doing something right.

One stick that keeps beating us at JMG Porsche is that we do not do anything without a customer authorising it.

Sometimes this means a car sits around for a week while we run around trying without success to get hold of a customer for authorisation, sometimes it means we stop a service while we wait for a customer to authorise something extra which is easier done while the car is part completed.. In any case, it means that every day we get a fraction done of what we would like to get done, and it means I can only dream of my technicians doing 40 hours of chargable work in a 40 hour week.

It also means I have to maintain a compound that can hold 30 customers cars, a T-Card and logistics systems set up to have 25 cars on the go at any one time, even though I do not have 25 cars turning up every day, and why even though I have a workshop with 4 lifts and 3 other bays, I can not move to a simple industrial unit with space inside for 4 lifts and 3 bays... Far more cars are here waiting for the "go ahead" from customers every day than there are being worked on every day.

The reason we work like this? Because we can not see another way of working.

Maybe most garages just get on with it and present a massive bill to customers when they come to collect the car, maybe this is normal, but because I have never had to use a garage (owning a garage kind of stops this from happening) I have no idea what is reasonable.

The idea of presenting a customer who had expected a bill for a service and a minor running fault, with a bill of thousands of pounds, to me, seems completely out of order.

I even have some customers in the UK and overseas who give me an open cheque book, and sometimes they seem a bit miffed that we still call them for authorisation, but to be honest, how should I know when to just go ahead and spend someone elses money and when should I call them?? Or where do I draw the line, we even call a customer for a £5 item.. I take the attitude that if I am not going to do it for free, then the customer should not be expected to pay for the unexpected.

So, am I just a daft bugger? or has this other garage got some brass kahooners?

At least its all done, and in some ways, even though specialists like me offer an alternative to genuine Porsche fuel lines at a cheaper price, it is nice to see a Porsche get the original parts from time to time. No improvement in function, but in 20 years time yours might be one of the few in the world with original type fuel lines.

However, please do not give a garage an open cheque book again, thats crazy!

Hi Jon,

Just been looking at your website, if only i had known about you first, would have been worth the travel, and I assume that i would not have received such a huge repair bill!
I'm not one for pulling people apart ~ but the length of time they had the car, being messed about stating they were unable to source parts and had to get them shipped from the USA and of course the final bill....... Would it be possible for me to scan the bill and part list to your personal email address for you to see if the price can be justified for the work carried out?

Kind regards
Wayne

jmgarage · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 10:07 pm

PM Sent with contact details.

Don't want to run anyone down, there might be a logical reason for all this and I will look over the bill when you email it and let you know what I think.

On the surface, it looks a bit inflated, or perhaps he has done a real restoration targeted repair, I do not know Peter Chambers, maybe he advertises as a Porsche restorer and has signs in his reception saying he only uses genuine Porsche parts and will go ahead with any repairs he feels fit.. Or maybe you gave him permission to "Just do whatever it needs" and he kind of ran off the leash a bit, so maybe you had fair warning,.

He could on the other hand of been either very silly in going ahead using expensive new genuine parts which Porsche may have told him were unavailable, and he then paid to ship parts from the USA, which in the case of fuel pipes, could have taken an age and cost a fortune.. Or he was maybe taking the mick.. I don't know.

Might not be fair to flog him in public yet,

In the past I have had to be an expert witness in court for people who have had an unfortunate experience with a specialist. Sometimes it has been well and truely justified, on a couple of occasions it has been not entirely justified in reason, but within the law the poor specialist got a hiding.

I once even had to defend my knowledge in court when another Porsche specialist in the Swindon Oxford area wound up a customer by telling him we had missed a hose off of his engine.. Turned out the specialist was not so clued up and had not bothered to read the official technical service bulletins from over 10 years previous, which all specialists should know and have inserted into their factory manuals, that required the urgent removal of that hose from all cars that had it installed, as it could destroy the engine by hydrolocking!! So that specialist in Oxford/Swindon spouted his mouth of and ended up with egg on his face to the courts and to the customer.

So, the moral of this story, sometimes it might not be written or obvious what the cause for a specialists actions may be until there has been some investigation.. it could be that he had to perform some serious chassis repairs to refit your rear beam due to corrosion, and the rear beam mount mentioned may be the section of the inner sill.. which to completely replace could be very expensive and the part almost impossible to find... On the other hand, maybe it was just the aluminium mounting section, which if not available, can be rebushed, so crazy to buy a whole new one when the bushes are available and used ones to rebuild plentiful.

Who knows.

There are good Porsche specialists out there, and there are some really aweful ones. There are three companies on my doorstep who claim to be Porsche specialists, one previously has a history of being a lorry refridgeration specialist, one is just a Bosch service centre and the other is a previous Jag specialist... All of them advertise as a Porsche specialist, all of them also advertise as specialists in other manufacturers cars, and all of them keep cocking up cars which end up coming to me for rectification, normally at the customers cost.. Unfortunately, these days every bugger seems to be a Porsche specialist..

My father was a Porsche specialist since the 1970's, I have been one for 26 years and my eldest son also now works for the business, so it really does burn me up when I see fly by night ones. especially when I often end up discounting invoices to customers because I feel bad that they got burnt by one of them and their car half ruined.

Also, what a lot of people do not realise, there are a lot of rogue customers out there these days conning the Porsche specialists with threats of ruining their reputation unless they get money in compensation for some outragous claims. Which seems to be a more recent phenomina, which we had to build in measures and policies to deal with...

Not nice being a Porsche specialist at times thesedays. And from posts I have seen from Barry Hart, I am not the only one.

So in conclusion.. I will look at your invoice, I will tell you what I think and I will tell you how to gather the evidence to back up what I advise.. But what I tell you will be between us and not to be posted in an open forum, however the evidence you gather elsewhere based on my advice is of course open for publishing.. Deal?

951Torqing · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 10:55 pm

Looking at your location you are < 100miles away from JMGarage.
For the last 6 years I have traveled from Lincoln (480 return) for my Turbos annual Service/MOT/TLC to JMG.
I used to drop it off for a week, using National Express to get home & back the following weekend. Bus fares have gone up considerably so now I stop over at a local B&B (£25/night) for one or 2 nights. http://www.brantwoodguesthouse.com/
That could be an option for you :?:

.
I'm sure you would be pleased with the service you get. I wouldn't be putting myself out as much as I do If I wasn't.

Jon, Please continue to keep your way of working as it is, I'm sure I'm not the only one who truly appreciates your Specialist Porsche Professionalism.
Clive

David924S · **Posted:** Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:40 am

I use David Raper Care Tech and Care near Brompton on Swale NYorks, always great service and price, the last time it went in for work I was going to the US for a family Wedding so I left the car with him for nearly 3 weeks to change all the belts, full oil plug service, re-time the cams and replace some dodgy cam followers.

While away he emailed me with pictures from inside showing potential wear on the cam journals, then to tell me the water pump and belt rollers had wear so was it OK to get a price, I agreed he came back with a price and we then agreed to go ahead. He did no extra work without contacting me and confirming the new total price.

How it should be in my opinion, oh and to collect the car he even picked me up on his way to work to save me needing to get a lift to his workshop.

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