Forum:
Hi
Just before Christmas, knowing that I was driving to France for the holiday, I had my Sportrak ELXi given a full service which cost me £550 at Bushey Hall Garage, nr Watford.
I had only been off the ferry for an hour when the oil pressure warning light came on and seconds later the car died on me. It was midnight, cold and dark and I had my 5 year old son with us. My wife, who is french, contacted the right department who towed me off the road to the nearest village at a cost of £150, where we stayed the night in a hotel, at a cost of £100.
My car is still in france at a local garage. We had to get the eurostar home at a cost of £350.
I have faxed over the invoice that Bushey Hall Garage gave me to help them diagnose the fault. First indicatiions are that while Bushey Hall states that they replaced the rocker box gasket, they may not have done, or they did it badly and it was this that caused me to breakdown.
This has cost me a small fortune and I would like to sue Bushey Hall Garage to recover my costs as i believe they have been negligent.
Any thoughts
- about the problem and its cause
- the liability of Bushey Hall garage
comments gratefully received.
jason
Garages can be slippery little barstewards.
OK, to sue someone sucessfully, you have to prove negligence.
In this case, you have to prove that a reasonable standard of professionalism was not exercised by the garage when they worked on your sporty. The bill and receipt for your payment is evidence for what they did.
Now you need evidence to show what they did caused the damage to your vehicle. If this happened in the UK, I would immediately suggest that you get an AA inspection and report. If the result of the report has the garage 'bang to rights' at fault, then your action is pretty well assured to succeed.
I don't know if an equivalent organisation to the AA exists in France, but having a French-speaking wife should help greatly in finding this out, together with negotiating the equivalent report. You will have to stump up for some phone calls to France, I'm afraid. Log the calls and their cost.
I would stress the need to move quickly on this, especially as your vehicle is sitting around some provincial French garage with gawd knows what happening to it. It would be a defence against your action that work was done to the vehicle by the French garage, that altered the original work that caused the damage.
It might be necessary to recover the vehicle from France and have the AA inspection performed here. (Did you have recovery insurance from Europe?) This will cost you more money, which you may not recover by the end of this sorry tale.
BTW, keep receipts for everything to justify your claim for damages.
In the end, even if you obtain judgement against the garage, you may find that they declare themselves bankrupt, go out of business for a weekend, and then re-emerge on Monday as "Fred's Garage (2007) Ltd."
I'll have a chat with my lawyer friend on New Year's Day and see what he says.
following the trail of suspicion
Thanks for the reply.
The garage in france said that an "official" will check to see if the work that Bushey Hall claims that they have done, has been done, and will then write a report which will be stamped.
On my invoice from Bushey Hall, the first item is "Carried out full service". I am thinking that a mechanic of expected reasonable skill should have been able to spot any problem which would have led to the car breaking down so suddenly and have informed me of it so i could then have requested it be fixed. Surely there would have been clues, and to use a phrase from the surveying profession, they should have 'followed the trail of suspicion.'
jason
jasonw
Possible cause
Hi, Jason,
OK about the French 'official' writing a report. If that is conclusive, I would suggest that it would constitute sufficient evidence that the UK garage is at fault. Unfortunately, unless this is totally damning, I bet the UK courts would not value it as much as an AA report on the vehicle. This is your call, depending on how far you are prepared to pursue your claim, and, more importantly, how much money you are prepared to sink into pursuing it !
As to a posssible fault, the obvious one that springs to mind is that the bozo at the garage didn't fit the rocker cover gasket properly, and over the course of your journey all the oil leaked out. BTW, there's only oil being pumped up there while the engine is running, so it won't be obviously leaking when the vehicle is parked.
AA Europe
Why do you not hold AA European breakdown cover?
The cost is far cheaper than costing a breakdown and also covers 'homestart', 'recovery to UK' etc.
breakdown cover
You know, after spending £550 on a full service, plus all the other bits and pieces they did, I didn't think that I would need to spend more on breakdown.
'I told you so' comments are not really useful.
jason
jasonw
BREAKING DOWN IN FRANCE
Hi
First, sorry to hear about your ruined trip and extreme bad luck. I had the same happen on a V4 Ford and it was a 90p drive shaft on the oil pump. 90p and a wrecked engine.
I live in France and have had no problems with the garages and the labour costs are so much cheaper than the UK.eg AUDI Main Dealer €43 per hour. OK that is no blessing in these circumstances
Sportraks and Daihatsu are rare here although I have two Sporties and a Hijet Van. The only place I know for parts is Rouen in Normandy.
It may well be nothing to do with the service as engines lose oil pressure for all kinds of reasons which may not had been obviously caused by the service or obvious to the engineer carrying out the service. Eg an oil pump can fail or the drive shaft, as I said earlier, for the pump can fail without warning and all the pressure will then be lost. I know again it is of no help but did you check the oil level when the car was returned to you? I think it would have been fine or you wouldn't have got to the Port
Unless there was an obvious leak of oil then you may find the cost of an investigation by a French expert will be yet another cost to add to the cost incurred to date and likely to be lost. I have my doubts on the top cover gasket as that is not usually removed for a service. The tappets being hydraulic rarely need sorting, but if you had asked them to sort them then it would have been removed but, it is unlikely to have caused such a serious loss of oil/ pressure. The pressures inside the rocker cover are low. I really suspect the pump being the fault.
Proving negligence will be very difficult in most cases regardless of where the problem occured. Most garages will ignore reports from other garages. I know it isn't that obvious but the UK is a member state and a report should not be any different from French or English enginners. In reality, French engineers are much more controlled and independant and should be treated with respect, but it is 99% unlikely.
As for recovery there is no equivalent to the AA or RAC in France. Recovery Mondial (World) is part of most Insurances for cars in France. Something that would be nice in the UK and would have saved you the cost of recovery at least.
Also your car will be perfectly safe in "some provincial French Garage" as we do not suffer from the petty YOB culture thank the lord over here.
Good luck but sorry I think you are out on a limb with this one, bloody shame all round.
Best wishes for 2007
Mike
M J Young
Evreux
Hi
Thanks for the reply.
I know Rouen, we go through it or pass by on the way to Evreux which is where the wife comes from.
I agree with you about the yob culture. The kids I have met in France are always very respectful of other people.
jason
jasonw