Reply To: Garage owner forced to pay £11,150 following trading standards sting

[Paul Taylor]

Call me a fossil but I came from an era when you had carbs and points you serviced your car twice a year summer and winter service items/fluids were changed/checked yearly as they were not that reliable things rusted and quite often fell off but you knew what you was doing. With today’s cars and technology it is a virtual mine field of variables of time related intervals, long life this and that, special oils and procedures, no 2 cars are the same and customers have access to information and will soon tell you if you have spent to long or charged to much for their car. They don’t want to know you have charged an extra 1/2 hour checking things that are not on the list making sure it is safe. What is the correct service for a car? most small one man band’ers can afford to have access to this info plus the yearly updates and the diagnostics m/c to go with it. If you have not serviced it from new that is the only way to know it has been done to manufactures specs and corners have not been cut. All cars are different how can you have a set service working from a set service schedule usually comprising of a main and interim service There are to many back street cowboys out there giving the trade a bad name it we already have an up hill struggle it needs regulation.