Croxted Motors - AVOID!

[faresse]

I rarely leave a review, but after visiting Croxted Motors, I feel compelled to do so! If I prevent one person getting ripped of for non-existent work, then my job here is done.

I usually go to South London Clutch in Peckham, who are brilliant. However, I left it too late booking the car in for an MOT and so I could not get a slot that worked with our work calendar.

I called Croxted Motors and was told I could drive the car in the next day for am MOT (alarm bells should have been ringing right away - any decent garage has work on and some sort of waiting list). The car failed on a drop link and a mirror indicator not working. I knew the mirror indicator wasn't working as someone had kicked the power fold mirror meaning that when the ignition was turned on, it folded all the way out to point it was facing the nearside kerb.

However, I didn't know that this was an MOT fail (or I would have replaced it completely), and so I unplugged the mirror by taking off the door card, and quite literally, unplugging the wire loom. This is a job that took me approximately 8-10 minutes, including the time it takes to put the door card back on.

Mitch, the manager, told me that he would have a look at the mirror for free, but if he fixed it he would charge me (and interestingly didn't give a quote).

I called Croxted after not hearing anything from them, and was told that the car was ready to collect. Mitch told me that the indicator was "fixed" and working perfectly.

I was quoted 35 for the MOT and 50 for the drop link with labour, so you can imagine my surprise when I got to the garage and found a total of around ?170 at the bottom of the invoice. It said that the mirror had been attended to, and that some "re-wiring" had been done to the wire loom. I got into the car, turned the ignition, and watched on in horror as my mirror folded out until it faced completely away from the car. It then dawned on me that the "mechanic" had simply plugged the wire loom back in and charged a small fortune to do so, breaking two clips on the door card in the process.

I got home and removed the door card to inspect the ?re-wiring work,? and it was instantly clear to me that no re-wiring had been done to the loom. I also removed the cover to the mirror itself and it was obvious that no work had been done on any of the wiring inside the door card or the mirror. I knew this because I had spent a long time looking at the wiring (before the MOT) after the mirror was damaged in the first place and had taken photos of it that I shared with a Civic owners forum in an attempt to find a way to fix the mirror.

I went back to Croxted the following day and spoke to the man on the counter. I asked what attention was given to the mirror and I was told the wiring loom had been "completely stripped down," "re-wired," and "soldered." I simply replied, "none of that has been done." The man on the counter looked at me blankly and said I would need to speak to Mitch, who of course, wasn't around.

I called Mitch the following day and asked what had been done to the mirror, and in almost rehearsed fashion, he banded around mechanical buzz-words like totally "stripped down" and "re-wired." When I explained how and why this was simply not true, Mitch constantly took the conversation 'off piste', and time and time again, I had to return to the bare facts - that either he, or his mechanics, were not telling the truth. I was, by now, starting to get a little annoyed.

He then told me that after speaking to the mechanic who carried out the work, that he had "sworn" he had spend a "long time on the mirror," and that he found the wire loom "hanging on the floor." This claim blew me away, as if the wire was indeed dragging on the floor, it would have successfully defied the laws of physics. This is because the wire he referred to is all of 8" long and runs from the wing mirror itself.

I found myself repeating myself over and over while he took an extremely defensive tone. The work listed on the invoice had not been done. It was non-existent. It was, for the want of a better word, a lie. Furthermore, if the mechanic had indeed spent a "long time" on the mirror, then he's simply incompetent.

I was offered a ?30 refund. I accepted this offer over the phone simply through exasperation with the situation, but on reflection, I should have had all of the money that I paid for the mirror to be "fixed," back. The indicator light did indeed work, but the mirror was rendered completely useless in the process.

I now question the legitimacy of the work carried out to replace the drop link. Did this work need doing at all? This is now impossible to tell. Was this work done at all? Without getting the car inspected, I will never know.

In summary, this is a garage that should be avoided at all costs. I would suggest that honesty is the most important characteristic to look for when choosing a mechanic to leave your car with. The people that I have dealt with at Croxted Motors have shown themselves to be wholly untrustworthy. This leaves me wondering just how many trusting people have been fleeced out of their hard earned income by Croxted Motors, the vast majority of whom would drive away blissfully unaware.

[firekat2]

Rip off merchants......... stopped using them several years ago as I was fed up being ripped off.

[Azira]

Pretty sure that charging you for services not performed (like, for instance, overcharging for materials) is fraud. In your position, I'd be going back and chasing them for the rest.