This was not my call really, and part of an ongoing problem or worrying trend I am seeing more of
I will explain, but not try to bore everyone in the process
My workshop is next to large company that developed the Oyster Card technology (London Underground) and install it all over the word, so they are all pretty savvy technology wise (they are also a big customer of mine)
This engineer lives in Wales and works down here in the week. He called to say the car is misfiring and keeps going into limp, can I Code Read
He came in and I code read and printed them out for him, done a search in the archives to give him some idea of what the fault may be, but may require further investigation. He declined any further testing, took the printout, paid the £35.00 plus vat fee and said he would book it back in
From experience I new what he really meant was that he was now going to Google it to death and check on various forums, which he did
On Monday he called to say he had purchased a loom from his local VW Dealership, plus the parts guy told him it was a common problem. As I do not wish to upset a good source of income I agreed to fit for an hours labour. He was lucky as it fixed his problem
Over the last month or so I have had various jobs where I have code read and customer just pays for the printout, they telephones back a few days later after having done their research as to the likeliest cause, they then source the parts from ECP at trade or Ebay, then ask me to fit, and so far all have been lucky as it has fixed the vehicles. Two case in the last fortnight a EGR for 2007 Astra and Throttle valve (shut off butterfly) for 2005 Golf, both purchased from ECP at trade
The trouble is that there are far to many Garage Technicians posting on open forums with common problems to vehicles, even replying to members of that forum who are not in our trade with a username such as "Carfreak009". Anyone can sign up to these forums and search their archives for free
So in this case it was not so much of a Guess, but just carrying out my customers instructions, which made him very happy, so he goes off and recommends me to more workmates
Peter
PS:
If the parts that they supply do not fix the fault, then its down to them, and then the diagnostic clock starts ticking bigtime
Copyright © uk autotalk