Tom S

Buying a used car from this place

My friend took his Passat into Hilltop Service Station for an MOT. In fact, this was arranged in a rush as the MOT had expired two days previous (naughty!) and he chose this garage as it was convenient and close to his home. He was convinced that it would pass first time as he had a service last month at a well respected VW specialist out of town (he goes there every year) who didn’t spot anything massively wrong with the car. To his annoyance, the chain garage failed the MOT on 3 areas 1) Uneven braking on front wheels 2) Excessive play in near-side suspension arm 3) Excessive play in off-side suspension arm The garage were asking for almost £500 to resolve these problems. He then phoned the VW specialist who remembers servicing the car and suggested that the garage may be exaggerating the problems. VW specialist said they had a time slot that same day to do the MOT themselves. Even if those were serious problems, the specialist said the work was way overpriced and it should come to around £200 all in. My friend said he wanted a 2nd opinion and paid the garage the £50 for doing the MOT test and took the car over to the other garage, who performed the MOT test and passed it with no serious faults. The specialist even said that he knows of many cases where this particular high-street garage has found work that does not need doing and charged customers way too much.