FTO AUSTRALIA

Has anyone taken their car to get some work done on it and some how found out your car was taken for a joyride? I dropped off my car today to get a blueslip, i took an OD reading and when i picked it up found an extra 20 kays on the clock, I have seen one of the guys that works there around before and i wouldnt trust him, however he had to drive my car to a nearby weighbridge to do the test (g/f saw him), this is no-more than a 1 km round trip, so Im pretty certain he gave my car a pretty good 20 km hiding whilst he was taking it there .
Anyhow, im going to be going back there tomorrow with a group of mates to seek an explaination for these extra kays and to sort these d!ckheads out

MintFTO wrote:Anyhow, im going to be going back there tomorrow with a group of mates to seek an explaination for these extra kays and to sort these d!ckheads out

hehe, go sick man.

make sure they see that you have your baseball bat with you, hehehe...

every time i go to unique my car spends hours on the dyno so i have no idea how many k's it has done... but they all have turbo's so i don't worry about what they do in my car

incidentally one of their mechanic's has the fastest mx2 in australia and 3rd in the world.... not bad hey

Some mechanics "test drive" the car as part of sevicing it. I doubt that this would require more than a 5km ride.

Hehe Well I headed back there with some mates today and requested to speak to the guy in charge the convo went something like this:

Me: I brought an FTO in yesterday to get a blue slip, how many kms do you think sounds reasonable for this?

Mechanic: Yeh I remember mate, no more than say 4 or 5 kays.

Me: Fair Enough, so do you think I should be a bit concerned about dropping the car off with 74253kms and picking it up with 74274kms? thats 20 kays...

Mechanic: Yeh, that doesnt sound right.

Me: There must be some kind of explanation for this, wouldnt you be concerned if this happened to your car?

Mechanic: Yeh well Im really sorry mate, I only took it to get weighed and do the brake test theres no way I would have put 20kays on it, I think I i'llhave a few words to the young bloke... Im really sorry.

Me: Ok then, I'm just letting you know I'mot happy about this...




F*ckin Idiots... No way im reckomending these stooges to anyone...

You might also want to note the drop-off and pick-up times, and get them to initial / sign them, in case there is a speeding fine from a camera.

haha so no baseball bat hey?? what did your mates do?? any intimation factor??

i took my car to get some mechanic work done, took bout 2 weeks.. i brought it in with half a tank of petrol, and i forgot to take out my cd's...

when i got it back, there was hardly any petrol left... i pretty much had to refill after driving for a few minutes... and also when i started the car, it was playing a cd, a cd which i NEVER listen to... its a sh*t CD, sh*t songs... and when i was listening to it.. i was like.. "WTF"..

i was quite pissed off... i wanted to change cd's, so i looked in the glove box, and all my cd's were missing!!!

f**king so pissed off... they stole my cd's, and 'maybe' took my car for test drive and used bout $20 bux worth of my petrol without refilling it back up... c**nts...

haha MintFTO, i admire you sense of 'diplomacy'... how you manage to keep it all together is beyond me, but having ppl along for moral support certainly helped eh?

It is worth noting that most mechanics are a member of an association or chamber of commerce, due to the professional and financial benefits that can be gained. e.g. VACC, MTA etc.

Although these associations are there for their members (the mechanics) they need to maintain their integrity and also protect the good mechanics from the bad. Therefore, they take any complaint against any of their members very seriously and investigate it thoroughly. They want to ensure that you, as a customer are happy, and that any bad mechanics are weeded out of their system.

When I last had a bad experience with a mechanic, I called the VACC (VIC) and was pleasantly surprised by how seriously and professionally they handled the matter. The mechanic who had done the wrong thing by me, and who refused to do anything about it, very quickly righted the situation as soon as the VACC was involved. It was amazing the difference one phone call made. I was also very impressed by how detailed the VACC got, and how they followed up.

A list of the associations, for the various states, can be found here: http://www.motor.net.au/

If you escalate it to the appropriate authorities, I'm pretty sure you'll get some kind of response. For most of these places, it's their livelihood we're talking about.

Yeah I always take out everything from my car if I do need leave my car somewhere and with a small amount of fuel left. I guess it also depends if you have good rapport with these places you go to.

D-TRAIN wrote: I guess it also depends if you have good rapport with these places you go to.

I agree, if you dont trust the mechanic then try another place. I am still looking for a place to take my fto to (Probably UAS). But I guess posts like this help you decide who's good and who's not.

haha so no baseball bat hey?? what did your mates do?? any intimation factor??

Hehe, Nah Didnt use the baseball bat for this exersize, just the boys for a bit of power in numbers.

Perhaps if i had a situation like what thecook described we would have all turned up with a baseball bat in hand...

what is it with d!ckheads these days?? some of them need to be taught a lesson or two about respect

yeah i took it to a crash repairer and one of the guys drove it around for nearly 2weeks, my friend said he'd been seeing me always driving up the express way but i live like 2hours fromt here and hadn't even seen my car in 3weeks.

bastards!

In the case of the crash repairer, if this was done through your insurance company, you can report this to the Insurance Ombudsman (an independant, government appointed, over-seerer of the industry).

The Ombudsman would take something like this very seriously, the insurance company would get their but kicked BIG TIME, and they in turn would do the same to the repairer.

If the Ombudsman was involved, you may also receive some sort of financial benefit, i.e. your excess waived etc.