abdr500

iTrader: (1)

is the car in the same condition no damage just speack to the manger ther and tell them that you want the petrol money and if you get any speeding letter or fine ect you will give ther details over to the police

Lloyd

speak to the manager first,may have been part of a road test,or gen reason.

James998

Depends what it was booked in for, if it was a running concern then it will need to be road tested, but if it was just a service or similar I would go see the service manager as your car should have no more than 0.5 miles on it IMO.

Graceland

30 miles for a road test? takes the piss a bit that - 5 to 10 miles maybe for a roadtest.

bailey1

iTrader: (2)

0.5 miles for a road test lol never heard such a quote
i am a ford tech and we are supposed to road test every vehicle before and after any work is carried out at all including services diagnostics etc.
there are many different road tests associated to certain types of jobs that either need diagnosing or testing etc. for example if you come in and said your car ad a rattle that only happened when you went over a bump you would have to road test till you found it then took it back fixed it then road tested it to check all was well now how could you say this would take a certain mileage ??? but i agree that if you just had a routine service then as long as there was no rattles or knocks then a straight forward road test covering between 2-6 miles depending on a route or location etc would be about right .i always do at least 2 miles before and 2 miles after every standard service so i know there are no problems as we all have had the well it wasnt there before routine so i make sure i cover my ass.hope that helps mate

Lloyd

that depends on if the fault is fixed the first time,it could take 2 or 3 road tests to diagnose and cure.more so if its a cosworth or something exotic.

ricky_2006

it would help if u told us wot it went in for bro

Stavros

30miles is a pisstake unless there was a very odd problem you told them to diagnose that doesnt happen often, thats blatantly using your car to go to lunch, collect shit, and generally razz around.

And yes, they do it, lots. And I worked for a dealership so know it happens. Pretty much every day...

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

My branch is 5miles from the M11, and when we have a car in for a windnoise complaint, we test drive it, and if it isn't heard on regular roads, we take it down a junction on the M11 and back again - which is about a total round trip distance of roughly 20miles (bout 5 to the M11, 5 down it, 5 back up it, and another 5 back to office)

So 30miles might sound like a pisstake, but there may well be a good reason!

cossie604

iTrader: (2)

Where my dealership is we have to drive a fair bit to get out of the towns and onto a open road....you do a round trip and it comes to about 14mile. If you then need a 2nd opinon then your gonna have to go do the same again.....so 30mile for a road test seems fine imo. The customer would be alot more fucked off if they had to keep on returning for the same fault when it could have been diagnosed in one decent road test and sorted wouldnt they.

dojj

iTrader: (3)

my car went into ford for a warranty tca
it came back with 34 miles extra on it and they said it was not covered under warranty because i had fitted poly bushes

i was still fighting the cost of them when they went somewhere else

keep at it and don't give up

Stavros

He said a SERVICE not a rattle or particular problem...

I used to see this happening every day, fuck, i used to do it back then, so it dont suprise me.

C4llyT

When I worked at a garage cars wouldn't go out even after new brakes all round

Have to be a rather extraordinary situation to require 30 miles, think of the labout cost that would incurr, unless on someones lunchbreak...

cossie604

iTrader: (2)

So you never found a problem during a service then?? I wanna work on what ever brand you worked on Also he didnt say he took his car in for a service either....he worded the topics opening post as a hypothetical situation with no indication as to work he had had done.

EDIT: which has just been backed up by the previous post that sneeked in previous to mine going live lol

C4llyT

If Benni complained his dad would just call him a selfish cunt though.

jameswrx

Annoys me this! I mean you pay for your pride and joy and some monkey who smokes around in an old shitter gets to rag your baby round!

I've had it myself a couple of times (once saw my M3 being hooned up the road) and once had some paintwork done on a car only to get "goes well doesn't it" when I collected it.. WTF!

My favourite is watching the tyre fitters get in my car out the front of shop revving it as they reverse, then proceed to cane it in 1st gear past the viewing window.. full arm over steering wheel style.. round to the fitting bay.

A new RS4 caught my eye the other day, travelling at high speed.. noticed the driver who was someone I recognised.. purely out ona test drive by the looks of it

155lee

iTrader: (10)

i left my cossie rep in an airport carpark,didnt take note of the mileage as i was late,came back and the car looked fine,until i got a flat tyre on the way home,i changed it,didnt think nothing about it,took it out the next day and got another flat tyree.when i went to the garage the tyre fitter pointed out that both wheels were bady dinged on the inside,the scummy car park attendents had had the car out and ran it up a pavement damaging the wheels,i knew it wasnt me as i would have felt the bang needed to do that sort of damage to my wheels.i always take 2 notes of the mileage nowi leave 1 on the dash so they can see that i know what the miles are.on the other hand i bought a brand new vw crafter (totally unreliable) and the mechanic at vw has had it home more than i have,he usually puts diesel in it though!

Dangerous Malcolm..

I know a fella who took a customers car out on the butty run, while it was parked someone collided with it and drove off, he got a written warning over it. Customer never found out the real reason.

James998

If you read my post the way I intented it, you would have seen I meant 0.5 miles clocked up if you took your car in for a service, and i'm sure my boss wouldn't be happy me taking every single car I serviced out for a random drive, try explaining to the customer why their car has been binned 5 miles away from the garage

James

it's only a car at the end of the day, lifes too short to complain and fight for 30 miles worth of petrol money.

That said if your car had come in for a wiper blade or a light bulb then yeah, it does take the piss and i don't blame you for enquiring with the manager.

i've put over well over 200 miles on a car on test drive before. a c-max with intermittant electrical problems iirc.

matts1

A lad I know used to work for merc, they used to take out any decent motor and hammer the shit out of it!!

A mate also took his RS to a garage to have the sump seals done, so yes, it was due a testdrive, after he collected it he found it was much faster, and realised they had wound the boost valve right up, garga esaid they hadn't touch it and told him to cock off!

Munch

I remember a thread on here, where a chap took his Cossie (3dr iirc) for an MOT iirc.... they gave it abit of a test drove & crashed it

Cossie-Iain

I took my escort cossie to get an alarm fitted and on my way back to pick the car up it flew past me at high speed!!
I thought it had been stolen but luckily the fella was taking it for a test drive to make sure the alarm worked ok!!
That was good of him.

BM08

Made me laugh that bit

XRdodgybird

I hate it when they do this, when I had mi wheels refurbed on the 2i, I took it for valeting before Ford Fair (I was eight months pregnant and really couldn't be bothered cleaning it miself - )

When I got it back, they'd been out in it and one of the alloys was kerbed....

Last year, I took it for some temporary welding doing to the inner sill just to get it through the MOT. The garage that had it, again took it out (mileage checked) and when I got it back, they'd done sommat to the suspension driving it up the very rough road/track they had to the garage.

Surprise surprise... when we rang em and tried to confront them, they locked up shop and went home....

Ade

I did my school work experience at a Ford dealer... the first thing I did was be taken for a 120+MPH blast in a Mondeo in for its first service.

And that was nothing compared to some of the stuff I saw later on there!
I know some will be good, but it's really pot luck when you give a car into a main dealer...

puddy

I had a lotus sunbeam years ago,and had to have a new windscreen fitted,so I left it for

the afternoon at the local w/sreen repairers in guildford where I live(a**ison windscreens)

for anyone local !

Got a mate to drop me off round the corner after work, and as I was walking back I

bumped into a mate that worked in the exhaust repair centre next door to em.

I asked him if he had seen a black and silver motor being thrashed up and down the road

on a hunch ," Oh yeah,been roaring up and down all after noon" he said .

Needless to say i got a good discount when i mentioned this all to the guy that presented

me with the bill!

puddy

Ginge !

you know what, ive worked at a few main dealers over the years, ive YET to see this happen, dont get me wrong ive thrashed the arse of company demo's, ive used demo cars for the breakfast run/collect speakers and remember a service manager borrowing the loan car fleet one weekend so they could all get to hes brothers stag do

most techs aint even interested in cars anymore, most are football freeks, used to anoy me as i hate the game

ive been requested to take a XC90 home to check for a fault as i lived further away, been asked by a customer to take a car home and deliver it first thing so he can use it for work, ive delivered cars to peoples houses

ive YET to thrash a customers old motor when im covered to thrash the demo models and not worry about what happens

most of the time its a person with a second had 1.25 fiesta who comes out with these claims

as for seeing someones car in the evening driven by a service manager,,,,, WHAT A LOAD OF FUCKING HORSE SHITE, all service managers get given a company car WITH FREE FUEL for that car on a fuel card,,,,,,, why would he bother with a customer car when all hes CD's ect are in it ???

im thinking benni is talking bollox

back street garages...... yeah maybe due to not having a fleet of brand new cars with free fuel to play with

main dealers,,,,, no fucking chance no matter what people claim,,,,, appretices do talk shite to hype up there job of passing tools and filling the water jug 6 days a week for 4 years

as said ive worked at 3 main dealers, and a few branches of each and worked as a service driver too so ive seen a bit

also most garages wont let apretices drive the cars due to insurance stating theyy have to be over 2

JonnyBravo

As far as LPG servicing goes we can cover all sorts of miles, if the customer literaly says its completely fine then a quick drive up the road and back with the laptop is enough, if there is any known faults or ones that show then I could easily cover 30 miles whilst checking the map or looking at engine diagnostics.

Obviously when we do a conversion we can put a fair few miles on cars, some customers hate it others don't care, they are pre warned that this may be the case though.

One car I did probably do upto 80 + miles in though was a Merc S420 iirc, it had been in several times with a cutting out on lpg fault, it would seem that no matter how you drove it I'd never experience the fault until one day I just drove at a constant speed for 30 odd miles on the A1 and found that the water temp was dropping off thus causing it to flick back to petrol.

A small roadtest would NEVER of shown that up and tbh it had been in several times before I managed to diagnose it with that fault so you could say I took the piss clocking up so many miles but sometimes it HAS to be done

sebspring

iTrader: (3)

dojj

iTrader: (3)

there's the difference though mate
and i think ginge has left a number off the last line as i'm sure my son (who is 2) isn't insured to drive either

iansoutham

Sometimes it isn't a bad thing to have a few miles put on the clock IF THE CIRCUMSTANCES WARRANT IT.

@ a Ford Dealer my father used to run, a young(ish) lad had an RS3100 Capri from new, abused it all the time. Every so often (3-4 months) it would come back for another engine under warranty .

After the 3rd engine, my father told the service manager to take it with him on holiday from London to Cornwall that weekend (long bank holiday weekend). Service manager ran it in gently for about 700 miles or so.

Handed it back to the lad on the Tuesday morning after telling him what they had done, lad never came for another engine again, yet he always used to come in for his services and never complained once.

As I say though, it does need to be warranted.