Jimbo
20-06-2004, 07:26 PM
Wonderful, a place for me to vent some frustration about Stoke's Holdcroft Mitsubishi. I'm sad to say that all of these mini-stories are very, very true and all occurred during a three and a half year period with my V6-24....
1) They once spelt Galant with two L's on my service sheet. How much confidence?
2) They lost my locking wheel nuts when they replaced my brake discs.
3) After they lost my nuts :p they agreed to replace them FOC with generic Mitsi nuts......and when I say generic, I meanthat they are designed to fit EVERY single last mitsubishi ever made. Basically, if I owned a Pajero they'd have looked ok, but as I didn't I had a rather unaesthetically pleasing 1cm of nut protruding from the alloys....on ALL 4 wheels. That's all they had apparently. :stunned:
4) They never once, I mean EVER, cleaned my car after a service. Once, early on in my tortuous relationship with them, I asked them to book me into a valet service so that they could properly clean inside and out after a service (I was working lots at the time). "No, no, don't waste your money, we clean all our cars every time they're serviced", was the seemingly geniune, yet sceptical reply. That night after the service I allowed myself a hysterical chuckle as I once again had to get the hose pipe out... :wall:
5) After complaining of a brake judder and leaving them to investigate during a routine service, I arrived back to collect my car to be greated with a bill for £170 for skimming the discs. "Why didn't you ring me?", I asked. "It says here to correct the brake judder", was their reply. "^*&^*&%£$%)(%, etc, etc" was my considered reply, which on reflection probably didn't help my case much. Since I knew the previous owner had already had this done once, I would have been more interested in the £265ish they quoted for fitting brand-new discs. :veryangry
6) They left my car unlocked in their car-park for at least 2 hours once.
7) On that occasion, my 6-disc CD player wasn't continuing to play U2 when I turned it back on, but instead was playing a totally different disc and the mileage seemed slightly higher than I recalled it being when I dropped it off. Reminded me of the time my girlfriend collected her boss's car from the garage and found £80's worth of gardening equpment in the boot.
8) After a prologed period of brake judder, they diagnosed the problem as being my driving style, more specifically that I was a "light braker", and that had caused the pads to "wear funny". :uhoh2:
9) Approaching the MOT this past January, I noticed one of the headlight bulbs had gone, and being a lazy git I got Holdcroft to replace it for me. They were brilliant, they replaced the bulb (although it took a while as they had real trouble getting it to work :rolleyes: ) and they didn't charge me for it, either. Faboulous, brilliant, relationship on-the-mend, etc. Howwweverrrr....my car failed it's MOT a week later due to the side-lights not working. The MOT guys were great and they replaced bulbs and fuses and tried everything they could, but couldn't get them working. Electical problem? I had 24 hours to find out, so back at Holdcroft after some dramatic waving of arms and exaggerated pointing at my car, they took a look and found that the wiring plug for the sidelights was disconnected.... "How could that have happened?", I asked. "Not sure", the mechanic replied, "where have you taken it recently"? :Scream1:
....and then recently with my VR4 when I wanted the near-death exhaust checked:
10) The desk clerk couldn't (initially) find VR4 in the database and wanted me to agree that it was actually a V6 Sport.....well, DUH! :end:
In their defence, as I want this to be a rational and balanced review ;) :
1) They did occasionally do the odd thing for me free.
2) They did skim my discs for me FOC on one occasion....probably cos they recalled my previous "fun" and the history of brake problems with the car.
3) They have some genuinely friendly and helpful counter staff (even if they didn't know how to spell Galant or know what a VR4 is).
4) erm....scraping the barrel here.....their coffee wan't totally undrinkable.
So, there you go. If you ever find yourself in Stoke with a dicky galant then.........swallow hard and try and make it to Crewe.
When it came to servicing the VR4 for the first time last week, i had absolutely no hesitation in taking a full day off work and driving 55 miles to Dudley for Xtreme to do it, and I have to say they did a fine job. They didn't wash it either, but my tolerance has become somewhat higher than most peoples!
1) They once spelt Galant with two L's on my service sheet. How much confidence?
2) They lost my locking wheel nuts when they replaced my brake discs.
3) After they lost my nuts :p they agreed to replace them FOC with generic Mitsi nuts......and when I say generic, I meanthat they are designed to fit EVERY single last mitsubishi ever made. Basically, if I owned a Pajero they'd have looked ok, but as I didn't I had a rather unaesthetically pleasing 1cm of nut protruding from the alloys....on ALL 4 wheels. That's all they had apparently. :stunned:
4) They never once, I mean EVER, cleaned my car after a service. Once, early on in my tortuous relationship with them, I asked them to book me into a valet service so that they could properly clean inside and out after a service (I was working lots at the time). "No, no, don't waste your money, we clean all our cars every time they're serviced", was the seemingly geniune, yet sceptical reply. That night after the service I allowed myself a hysterical chuckle as I once again had to get the hose pipe out... :wall:
5) After complaining of a brake judder and leaving them to investigate during a routine service, I arrived back to collect my car to be greated with a bill for £170 for skimming the discs. "Why didn't you ring me?", I asked. "It says here to correct the brake judder", was their reply. "^*&^*&%£$%)(%, etc, etc" was my considered reply, which on reflection probably didn't help my case much. Since I knew the previous owner had already had this done once, I would have been more interested in the £265ish they quoted for fitting brand-new discs. :veryangry
6) They left my car unlocked in their car-park for at least 2 hours once.
7) On that occasion, my 6-disc CD player wasn't continuing to play U2 when I turned it back on, but instead was playing a totally different disc and the mileage seemed slightly higher than I recalled it being when I dropped it off. Reminded me of the time my girlfriend collected her boss's car from the garage and found £80's worth of gardening equpment in the boot.
8) After a prologed period of brake judder, they diagnosed the problem as being my driving style, more specifically that I was a "light braker", and that had caused the pads to "wear funny". :uhoh2:
9) Approaching the MOT this past January, I noticed one of the headlight bulbs had gone, and being a lazy git I got Holdcroft to replace it for me. They were brilliant, they replaced the bulb (although it took a while as they had real trouble getting it to work :rolleyes: ) and they didn't charge me for it, either. Faboulous, brilliant, relationship on-the-mend, etc. Howwweverrrr....my car failed it's MOT a week later due to the side-lights not working. The MOT guys were great and they replaced bulbs and fuses and tried everything they could, but couldn't get them working. Electical problem? I had 24 hours to find out, so back at Holdcroft after some dramatic waving of arms and exaggerated pointing at my car, they took a look and found that the wiring plug for the sidelights was disconnected.... "How could that have happened?", I asked. "Not sure", the mechanic replied, "where have you taken it recently"? :Scream1:
....and then recently with my VR4 when I wanted the near-death exhaust checked:
10) The desk clerk couldn't (initially) find VR4 in the database and wanted me to agree that it was actually a V6 Sport.....well, DUH! :end:
In their defence, as I want this to be a rational and balanced review ;) :
1) They did occasionally do the odd thing for me free.
2) They did skim my discs for me FOC on one occasion....probably cos they recalled my previous "fun" and the history of brake problems with the car.
3) They have some genuinely friendly and helpful counter staff (even if they didn't know how to spell Galant or know what a VR4 is).
4) erm....scraping the barrel here.....their coffee wan't totally undrinkable.
So, there you go. If you ever find yourself in Stoke with a dicky galant then.........swallow hard and try and make it to Crewe.
When it came to servicing the VR4 for the first time last week, i had absolutely no hesitation in taking a full day off work and driving 55 miles to Dudley for Xtreme to do it, and I have to say they did a fine job. They didn't wash it either, but my tolerance has become somewhat higher than most peoples!