Bobby's World

Recently me and my partner bought a new car, an Audi A4 1.9 TDI, after a week we noticed the back brakes was making a grating noise. After checking around with prices etc we found Kwik fit to be a bit more expensive but the offer of replacing the brakes free of charge in the future appealed to us.

We took the car to our local garage in barnsley on Saturday at midday. They checked all the brakes over advising they do this to ensure there is nothing else wrong before they start the work, after waiting an hour for this they came back to us and told us the car needed more than the pads doing. this was the breakdown on what they said needed doing:

Total cost for this: £262.00 approx

Needless to say a little bit more than we was expecting. However what with it being the brakes you cant really take a chance on it so we said yes to getting them done. We were then advised they cant do it now as they needed to order the parts in. They said we would get the car back Monday and they would ring us, obviously we had to leave the car there.

Monday came and my partner waited all morning for a phone call but nothing, she then called them at 10:30am and they advised it wouldn't be until the afternoon. She then called again at 3pm and they advised they was half way through doing them and should be about an hour.

My partner went to pick her 3yr old son from nursery at 4pm. she headed down to Kwik fit, only being a 5min walk. When she arrived around 4:15pm she was informed the work was not completed. you might expect they could have run into a problem which had delayed them in completing the job, however a further 45mins later they pulled the car out.  Success.......

So she thought, Kwik Fit then realized they never did the break fluid and had to take it back in. my partner and her son had to wait a further 30mins for this to be changed. Success again.... so she thought.

Kwik fit advised her they couldn't do the brake fluid as there was a hole in the brake fluid container. They had advised her to get a replacement from a scrap yard as the part brand new would be extremely expensive. (later found out around £190). They did what they could and put enough brake fluid in to take it to the MIN mark. they said they wouldn't charge us for this and also kindly didn't charge us for un-seizing the calipers. In total we ended up paying £182.00.

Job done and all we needed was a replacement brake fluid container. my partner left the garage thinking all is well....

5mins later driving home the ABS and brake warning light came on, strange to say the least since this error had not occurred previously. The next day we phoned Kwik fit and advised them of the warning light and ABS light. They told us this was possibly because of the pressure in balance in the brake fluid container. I did not think this was right because the hole was in the container previously and no warning lights had come on.

A few days later we managed to get a replacement brake fluid container. after getting it fitted elsewhere ; due to Kwik fit not being able to fit it as it was not one of their parts; we re-filled the brake fluid container. after a test drive they noticed the fluid had yet again dropped below the MIN mark. With a replacement container this should not have happened. It was later discovered that one of the brake fluid pipes was not attached correctly and this resulted in the fluid squirting out, this was rectified and the fluid was topped back up.

We have no proof that this was a fault of Kwik Fit's however since they had advised before doing all the work to begin with they have to check all the brakes out before starting any work, if this was a problem previously then you think this would have been noticed since a simple drive around the block emptied most of the fluid container out. So we had this rectified and all seem well. 

5mins later after leaving the ABS and warning light came on again. with everything repaired surely this should not be happening? 

We called Kwik fit again on the Friday to advise this error was still occurring. The manager advised us to bring the car in Saturday and they will have a look at it. Saturday came and we took the car in at 11am as asked. They told us they was extremely busy and would be an 1hr 30mins at least before they could look at it. So me and my partner decided to walk into town to kill the time.

1:36pm came and we still had not heard anything from them so decided to ring. They told us they had not got round to looking at it yet and that there was 1 other car to look at before ours, we took a slow walk back to kill a bit more time, finally arriving at Kwik fit around 2:15pm, 

They told us they was just looking at it now. i watched the guy pull the car back into the garage and plug his diagnostic machine in. After a few prod's of the buttons he said the ABS warning was coming up because the rear left & right speed sensors was not returning a signal. See image below to see what this is:

Kwik fit then told us that they could not have damaged this, They ensured us it wasn't their fault and said it would cost us £78 each side to replace the sensors.

i don't think this is fair to be asking us to pay £156 to replace 2 sensors that i'm pretty sure they caused damage to in the first place. Needless to say they wont claim responsibility and we are now left with the ABS not working.

We called a car parts company called Road & Rally and they have quoted for the same part they will charge us £36.00 each side, a much better price however i still don't believe we should be paying for this.

In the end we have decided to never use Kwik fit again. it has been an expensive experience.

UPDATE: 11/09/2012

Just thought i would leave an update on this, after posting this blog over Facebook, Google+ and twitter it seems that Kwik Fit have contacted me via twitter asking for my number so they can speak to me about this issue, shall see where it leads to.

UPDATE: 17/09/2012

We got a phone call from the area manager on Thursday, he's advised kwik fit would have no reason to have any of the brake pipes off so the pipe not being on couldn't have been their fault, my partner insists they said they had run water through the Brake fluid container, on this one its a case of their word against ours. In regards to the sensors them self  the area manager does not believe these are the fault as the ABS light would be on all the time. They have asked us to pop in on Tuesday as they are sending a specialist from Leeds down to have a proper look. He has advised that if they replace something and it doesn't fix the fault then we wouldnt be ask to pay for it which is good. Its a case of waiting till Tuesday to see what the specialist says.

UPDATE: 19/09/2012

So we took the car in on Tuesday, we arrived bang on 9am as asked and the specialist was there waiting for us which is good, He took the car into the garage and plugged his computer in, after 30mins he has advised us that the wheel bearings have some play in them meaning when the wheel rotates the cog that the sensor reads is moving away from the sensor, The image below shows where the wheel bearings are:

As you can see from the image above the wheel bearing is where the sensor is. Hes advised this could be the reason why the sensor could not get a reading, he has also said that when we get this replaced if the error still persist then to bring it back so he can investigate further. He said at the moment with the wheel bearings as they are its distorting the computer readings. I feel a lot better with this response from Kwik Fit, the Specialist has explained whats up with them and why its effecting his investigation. So the next job now is to get these wheel bearings done and see what it does.   

UPDATE:  27/10/2012

We have taken the car to another garage as the MOT is due on the 5th November, The guy at the garage put the car into an MOT to see what needed doing. He came back with 4 things wrong, CV Boot, Left Upper Steering Arm and 2x Light Bulbs.... No mention of the wheel bearings so we mentioned this to the garage and he said they didn't fail the test and although there is some play in the wheel they don't sound as if they need doing....so now we have the issue of do we pay to get them done even though a specialist says they don't need doing. Luckily the man at the garage said he would have a look at the sensors for us. We are taking the car in on the 29th October so shall see what happens.

UPDATE: 02/01/2013

Well a few months later 4 days before Christmas the wheel bearing fail, we managed to find a nice little garage just around the corner who fixed this for us on Christmas eve. A very down to earth man. If anyone's in the barnsley area and doesn't want to get ripped off then i would recommend this place:

Autofix

We got wheel bearings done, we had both sides done for £120. This however has not fixed the problem at all the original error still exist. We have had no further contact from Kwik Fit. When we originally took the car in after speaking to the area manager the specialist said it was the wheel bearings causing errors, The question is now where do we go from here?

UPDATE: 03/03/2013

Well after many hours and a lot of money later the situation still existed, after thinking about it we decided we can lno longer keep spending money out on a car that we don't know when it will be fixed. Final result., Sell the the car. 

We ended up getting a new car which has none of these problems above. The morale of this story is to not use Kwik Fit.