Hello everyone,
So I picked my mini up yesterday from a local-ish specialist who have been doing bits and bobs on my car for quite a few years now. I've always been happy with the work and the service they offer.
Long story short, it failed its MOT on rusty outer sills / floor. Was offered a cheap option to bodge it but have to re-address the rot next year, or expensive option to do it correctly.
Having saved an "emergency car fund" for such occasions, i opted for the expensive option.
Work started, plenty of photos received, old crusty / patched outer sills removed, a few repairs using sections of readily available panels to the foot well and inner sills. Happy days. Outer sills go on, pictures received, all looks good.
So I got to the garage yesterday, cars there waiting for me, I'll admit (and it's very silly of me) I didn't give it the best of looks over. it'd been a long hot day, excuses excuses and I just wanted to go home, put my son to bed then go to work. But for that ill hold my hands up. So I pay them all of the £'s and a few pence and off I go, get home, pop the car away and get ready for my night shift.
I got up today to have a proper look and notice a bit of surface rust in the seam sealer already on the seam of the step and outer sill. Then I have another look, a closer look, a better look at the outer sill and have a guess what I find? Yes, you guess it, on both sides of the car, OVER SILLS!!
At no point were the words over sills or cover sills or even wide wills mentioned. I went for the expensive, done once, done right option. I was told the sills would be replaced. So you'd assume (i know the saying) that you wouldn't go through all the effort of repairing the floor, repairing the inner sill to then slap over sills on top!
I'm awaiting a phone call on Monday, but i'm fuming. Fuming with them, fuming with myself, fuming with the cat because it wont stop bothering me while i'm trying to sulk.
So to sum it up, I know I should have looked better, but lets pretend i didn't know the difference between the different types of outer sills and someone else had pointed it out weeks or months down the line. Where do I stand? I mean, I've paid, i didn't contest it at the time because i thought it was all good.
Am i relying on their good will to put actual proper sills on instead, for free?
Do I have some right based on that the work should be, or at least I assumed (that word again) it would be repaired using the correct panels. There's no way I'd have agreed to over sills being used, surely they fall under the bodge option and I'd have bodged it myself if I had the time but it's not a luxury I have at the moment.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'll not name the company.....well not until I've spoken to them on Monday anyway.
Thanks again,
- A very sad man!