- Original Poster
- #1
Hi all
It's not usual for me to ask about consumer rights advice for my own small business but here we go, guess there's always a first (maybe second) time! got a small situation.
I tune cars as a small part time business, for the most part it goes well but we do tune mostly older cars, which quite frankly (and you can imagine the type of people who tune their cars) are often poorly maintained. This has not really been too much of a problem because we do go a bit further in checking vehicles out, doing telemetry to ensure they are good and healthy before we start and mileage/age isn't always a good indicator of health anyway. But we do protect ourselves, because we can't possibly know intimately the health of a car everyone signs a waiver that might be a bit brutal sounding but basically says we are not responsible for any damage to a vehicle as a result of our works or it being put on our testing bench.
One of our customers contacted me yesterday regarding the loss of 4 wheel drive on his vehicle, he claims a component went missing whilst on our dyno (we did disable it) so initially I was concerned we had made a mistake in some way as the timing of the issue was inconvenient, the chap wasn't very pleasant but did come to the office to discuss it and we identified the part that was missing, though I did not admit any liability as quite frankly, we only disconnected an electrical box, and the part was a component within that box, so without disassembling I do not know how that part (a solenoid) could go missing. He claims to have found the part, but I have no evidence of this.
Anyway, whilst I do except myself from liability, i am generally unhappy to see people have problems following a remap so I had a look for some replacement solenoids and found some, but he refused to let me buy them as they would take 3 days to arrive, he instead departed saying he had places to be and would try and find a solenoid himself.
Tonight, which is the day after his visit, he has sent me a very formal email saying he has found and paid for a replacement solenoid at great expense, fitted it himself and that the fault has not been rectified, he then states that he has lost trust in me to look at his car, wants a 4x4 specialist to examine his 4 wheel drive system and will invoice me in due course with the repair costs, and expects 'some extra' on top due to the inconvenience.
The nitty gritty details are:
- I cannot say I have not made an error with 100% confidence, which is annoying but this would be a big error to make and I would have thought VERY noticable as like I say, the solenoid isn't really something I can get at with what I did. However the timing between me working the system and it having an issue is indeed very bad so I have been having some self doubts
- The car is 17 years old, over 140,000 miles, and has a lot of wear and tear as we reduced the power slightly as whilst the logs were healthier, they could have been better (this is normal but noteworthy)
- the customer does not have a complaint with the service we have provided in terms of the tuning itself
- I have not had the chance to examine the car, he has not asked me to, and his email tonight says he does not want me to
- Checking the car now would be a waste of time as he has now attempted a repair himself, and I cannot examine the condition it was in at the time the fault was first noticed in order to check if we have made an error
- I can obtain parts at a fraction of what he claims to have been forced to pay as a result of rejecting my offer to order them in
- I am feeling a bit suspect about why he feels the need for extra payment for inconvenience caused when his car is drivable (just without 4wd which is only a momentary thing). He is still using the car (he came in it yesterday) but we didn't look at it due to his decision to leave and the time was spent talking about the part and contacting suppliers
- the fact the missing solenoid being refitted has not resolved the fault indicates that part wasn't the fault, so I am not confident there isn't more at stake here in terms of whatever the wider problem is
This dispute is quite minor in the grand scheme of things and parts are costly, but not break the earth costly. That said, the customer has brought me crapbox cars previously (one I rejected outright) and so I'm happy to lose this customer. However, I don't want to completely abandon any legal, ethical or moral duty. This aside, I am very hurt by the fact he's gone straight to a pre-court sounding formal letter (written badly but clearly intended to scare) that demands payment, insists he doesn't want me to look at his car, and requires an inconvenience payment so forth.
I am also hurt that he won't let me attempt a repair, examine the vehicle, use parts that i can obtain for cheaper or otherwise. I have therefore simply responded to threatogram to acknowledge his formal instruction that he doesn't want me to work on his car and confirming that he has not given me an option to, and to state facts that whilst we worked on the system in question we saw no defects on the day.
So my question - do I have the right to insist I get to assess or repair the vehicle before he goes and self-repairs
It's not usual for me to ask about consumer rights advice for my own small business but here we go, guess there's always a first (maybe second) time! got a small situation.
I tune cars as a small part time business, for the most part it goes well but we do tune mostly older cars, which quite frankly (and you can imagine the type of people who tune their cars) are often poorly maintained. This has not really been too much of a problem because we do go a bit further in checking vehicles out, doing telemetry to ensure they are good and healthy before we start and mileage/age isn't always a good indicator of health anyway. But we do protect ourselves, because we can't possibly know intimately the health of a car everyone signs a waiver that might be a bit brutal sounding but basically says we are not responsible for any damage to a vehicle as a result of our works or it being put on our testing bench.
One of our customers contacted me yesterday regarding the loss of 4 wheel drive on his vehicle, he claims a component went missing whilst on our dyno (we did disable it) so initially I was concerned we had made a mistake in some way as the timing of the issue was inconvenient, the chap wasn't very pleasant but did come to the office to discuss it and we identified the part that was missing, though I did not admit any liability as quite frankly, we only disconnected an electrical box, and the part was a component within that box, so without disassembling I do not know how that part (a solenoid) could go missing. He claims to have found the part, but I have no evidence of this.
Anyway, whilst I do except myself from liability, i am generally unhappy to see people have problems following a remap so I had a look for some replacement solenoids and found some, but he refused to let me buy them as they would take 3 days to arrive, he instead departed saying he had places to be and would try and find a solenoid himself.
Tonight, which is the day after his visit, he has sent me a very formal email saying he has found and paid for a replacement solenoid at great expense, fitted it himself and that the fault has not been rectified, he then states that he has lost trust in me to look at his car, wants a 4x4 specialist to examine his 4 wheel drive system and will invoice me in due course with the repair costs, and expects 'some extra' on top due to the inconvenience.
The nitty gritty details are:
- I cannot say I have not made an error with 100% confidence, which is annoying but this would be a big error to make and I would have thought VERY noticable as like I say, the solenoid isn't really something I can get at with what I did. However the timing between me working the system and it having an issue is indeed very bad so I have been having some self doubts
- The car is 17 years old, over 140,000 miles, and has a lot of wear and tear as we reduced the power slightly as whilst the logs were healthier, they could have been better (this is normal but noteworthy)
- the customer does not have a complaint with the service we have provided in terms of the tuning itself
- I have not had the chance to examine the car, he has not asked me to, and his email tonight says he does not want me to
- Checking the car now would be a waste of time as he has now attempted a repair himself, and I cannot examine the condition it was in at the time the fault was first noticed in order to check if we have made an error
- I can obtain parts at a fraction of what he claims to have been forced to pay as a result of rejecting my offer to order them in
- I am feeling a bit suspect about why he feels the need for extra payment for inconvenience caused when his car is drivable (just without 4wd which is only a momentary thing). He is still using the car (he came in it yesterday) but we didn't look at it due to his decision to leave and the time was spent talking about the part and contacting suppliers
- the fact the missing solenoid being refitted has not resolved the fault indicates that part wasn't the fault, so I am not confident there isn't more at stake here in terms of whatever the wider problem is
This dispute is quite minor in the grand scheme of things and parts are costly, but not break the earth costly. That said, the customer has brought me crapbox cars previously (one I rejected outright) and so I'm happy to lose this customer. However, I don't want to completely abandon any legal, ethical or moral duty. This aside, I am very hurt by the fact he's gone straight to a pre-court sounding formal letter (written badly but clearly intended to scare) that demands payment, insists he doesn't want me to look at his car, and requires an inconvenience payment so forth.
I am also hurt that he won't let me attempt a repair, examine the vehicle, use parts that i can obtain for cheaper or otherwise. I have therefore simply responded to threatogram to acknowledge his formal instruction that he doesn't want me to work on his car and confirming that he has not given me an option to, and to state facts that whilst we worked on the system in question we saw no defects on the day.
So my question - do I have the right to insist I get to assess or repair the vehicle before he goes and self-repairs
