There should be a “Trip Advisor” type set up for garage services. I will relate a recent example of poor and costly service dished out to me by a “friendly” local garage I had been using (no more) up to that point.

Following the replacement of the front brake discs and pads. On collecting the car I noticed a fair amount of play in the brake pedal, but as I was due to be up in Yorkshire the following day visiting my parents, bled them through when I got home and all seemed well. Or so I thought.

A few days later, home and driving to work in the morning I experienced front wheel wobble. I stopped and inspected. Clearly the outer wheel bearing had been put back dry and over tightened leading to a catastrophic failure.

I subsequently discovered (inside information) that when replacing the discs that the brake callipers were split and not removed as required.

Later the same front wheel bearing was playing up again, evident by a significant grating noise, particularly when changing direction. I stripped this down and inspected. The previous repair to the outer bearing would appear to have been lacking as debris from the previous collapse had attached itself to the stub axle preventing the new outer bearing from seating properly (the inner had not been touched, evident by marking). The bearing had been turning in the casing, confining it to the scrap bin. I also needed to replace the stub-axle and hub.

You would have though I’d learnt my lesson by now, sadly not, just too convenient to use them, and I though they had been really good up to this point over the 10 years or so I had been using them.

The next job I entrusted was to have a leaking pinion oil seal replaced which at least at first cured the leak, closely followed by a fairly significant whine from the diff, which was extremely upsetting and expensive to put right and required a reconitioned diff.

The most obvious cause of this would have been an over tightened pinion nut which then over crushed the collapsible spacer. Whilst this can be a common error it is costly to put right. I approached the garage but they were not really interested judging, again from some inside information filtering back to me and decided it was going to be so difficult to categorically prove that I chose to take no further action.

I will never use these people again and I will never recommend them to anyone I know.

Oh happy days
Nick

In the "old days" there were real mechanics who repaired cars and their components - now the so called mechanics just replace parts (at the owners expense) until the problem goes away!!