Poor service from Bosch Service centre - am I being unreasonable.

Limped my car into Bosch Rondebosch to get the clutch repaired on Monday which required the removal of my gearbox. On Tuesday I collected the car and I immediately noticed that there was a bad vibration coming from the gearbox and drove around the box and told the mechanic. His first reaction was that he had test driven the car and that it was fine. He then opened the bonnet and asked me to rev the car and tried to change the topic to my waterpump which does make a faint whining sound. I then asked him to takemy car for a drive and when he immediately said that there was a problem. I'll admit at this point that I lost all faith in the mechanic. If he had test driven the car he would have picked it up so either he felt the vibrations and thought I wouldn't notice or he was lying about test driving the car. Either case is not great.

I left the car overnight and today I fetched the car and there was still a vibration although it wasn't as bad. They said they'd remounted everything.

When I phoned his excuse was that they hadn't test driven the car before fixing it so they couldn't tell if the vibration had been there before and they couldn't see anything wrong. He also said that I should keep the car a few days and see if it gets better. At this point I was pretty annoyed. Up until the clutch gave in the car felt really smooth and mechanically sound. Since the clutch work it is much worse.

My worry is that if there is a problem driving around with it is going to make things worse and possibly cause more issues. Also the comment about the vibration being there before really got up my nose because I'm not trying to take a chance and get them to fix another problem for free and I really resent the implication that I am being dishonest. It strikes me as if they are trying to avoid the responsibility for any issues introduced during the repair job.

I've contacted the Bosch franchise owners and Hello Peter. I just want to know if I'm being a bit unreasonable or if I do have a case here. Some outside perspective would be nice.

bosch service centres

problem here is it is your word against his, whilst it is very easy for you to recognise the vibrations as you know this car where he doesn't, but regardless he agreed with you that it was there and now it should be sorted, not be told to see if it magically gets better :wtf:

D3x! said:

bosch service centres

Click to expand...

So far I've had ok service from them. The problem is that I am sick of the dealerships ripping me off but I also want to go to a reputable non-backyard mechanic and around the Southern Suburbs in Cape Town we really don't have much choice. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Is it the clutch that vibrates or the whole car? Maybe check the engine mountings?

Toilet_Duck said:

Is it the clutch that vibrates or the whole car? Maybe check the engine mountings?

Click to expand...

The clutch definitely feels rough but there is vibration coming from the engine. Apparently they rechecked the mountings and the brackets. When I collected it today there was an improvement but the problem is still noticable.

Speak to a manager. I get this all the time with these guys. Chancers - the lot of them.

BobsLawnService said:

So far I've had ok service from them. The problem is that I am sick of the dealerships ripping me off but I also want to go to a reputable non-backyard mechanic and around the Southern Suburbs in Cape Town we really don't have much choice. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Click to expand...

I am JHB and haven't personally used them, went in one day to get a quote on a repair on my old car and the dude was making up the biggest carp under the sun, and had a friend who got shafted with bad service from them.

obviously not all their dealerships, just the impression I got from the one I went to

Had to take the old folks car back to them yesterday due to a rattle/vibration that started after a major service which included a CV joint boot replacement. Ended up being caused by the lower sway bar that was incorrectly refitted during the service. Not a biggy but still annoying.

Just an update for anyone who is interested. Bosch Head Office (Franchise owners.) got involved. The owner of Bosch Landsdowne road phoned on Friday and asked me to bring the car in on Friday which I did. This time they seem to have actually tried to find out what the problem was and it turns out that there was an issue with the way the clutch kit was installed so they replaced it properly this time. Useless mechanic refused to come out of the back when I came to collect the car and the receptionist had to explain what the issue was (Apparently the fork was misaligned and was vibrating against the clutch plate.)

So yeah, awesome service from the franchise owners at the head office.

good to hear, good on them!

Would you still reccomend them?

They're not loved on the Harfield FB group, most people are not very flattering and say you should go to Alan Edwards.

For me, they weren't bad. They managed to fix 2 major problems in my car that the dealers were constantly fobbing me off about. One was a busted fusebox (that Peugeot took 2 months to procure, disgraceful buggers) and the 2nd was a simple wiring issue that kept shorting out a R2500 fuel sensor (Peugeot replaced the sensor 5 times over 3 years, didn't even bother to look deeper. The sensor probably cost R5.50 but they put R2500 on the motorplan invoice). So I've had a decent time of it with them.

They also serviced my old Camry, nothing worth mentioning. Everything seemed fine.