paulatthehug

I had my first experience of Hawco today as I'd put the Yeti in for a big service and MoT including cam belt replacement and new rear discs. This was booked 28 days ago. I also live in Nairn so taking it in for service involves 90 miles of driving (as my wife has to go there and back twice in our other vehicle). Despite having 28 days' notice she announces when I arrive "oh, we can't do the discs today, the pads are on back order". Not impressed with that at all. Why didn't they phone me to reschedule? There was time before the MoT expired. Eventually she concedes that they can "probably" source the pads locally. So that was Strike 1 (although they did source the pads locally so at least this was done!) Two hours after I drop it off I get the link to the "vehicle health check video". In the bad old days of Arnold Clark this was one of the good bits in that the mechanic walked around under the Yeti and showed you things under the vehicle. This one, after the 30 seconds of canned intro video consisted of the camera pointing firmly at the boot while he said "hi mate, it's failed its MoT due to the horns not working". That was it. Fifteen seconds of a 75 second video. Strike 2 The page with the video (see below) also said "Horn inop - will require further investigation - suspect both horns faulty - mot fail" with a quoted price to fix of £339.05. Bear in mind both my wife and I had had occasion to use the horn (rare for me at least) in the past week and it was fine then so I didn't believe both had failed. Sounded like a wiring fault somewhere. Still a bit odd though that it had failed just then and that was an outrageous price to fix it (oh, and a pair of horns is less than £20 online). Strike 3 They then phoned me up to talk about this (oh, and they did offer to "just investigate" but they wanted over £100 just to do that) . I tell them I'm not paying that, I'll get it fixed locally. "Oh, we don't advise you drive it when it's failed its MoT" she says. Uh huh. Horn inoperable is "major" (i.e. a fail) rather than "minor" (advisory) but not "dangerous" so it's perfectly legal for me to drive as the old MoT is not expired and I'm not at all impressed that she's relying on my lack of knowledge of MoT law to try to keep the business. Strike 4 And now we come to the best part. I go to pick it up, book the MoT retest for next week (I'd already booked my local garage to fix it in a few days), and go out to my car, turn on the ignition and press the horn. BARRRP BARRRP. Yup, it's working just fine. Strike 5 and out So I now have an MoT certificate and I've had to apologetically cancel my booking at my local garage but as for Hawco the most charitable explanation is that the Yeti has an intermittent fault ... but that seems unlikely. The next is that their MoT tester is simply incompetent (did he turn the ignition key on?). At worst however I'm left wondering if I'd paid the £100+ to investigate would they have "found the fault and it's working now" ... Anyway I won't be using them again any time soon, if ever. Time to go back to relying on the non-franchise garage in Nairn.

Back in May 2019 I posted about an error code I was getting which apparently meant that the support heater pump was failing. Posts I found elsewhere at the time suggested that this is a fairly common fault. Last time it was replaced under warranty as the car was less than three years old but this time around I'm going to have to pay I fear but I'm wondering if there's any mileage in arguing that this pump should last longer than 2.5 years (especially as this is a low mileage vehicle, I'm only doing about 3,000 miles a year). I fear Skoda will say that the two year parts warranty has expired. The added complication here is that the pump was replaced by Skoda's then dealer in Invernesss (Arnold Clark) but the franchise has now moved to Hawco. Any thoughts? TIA.

I did that initially (I used to drive Series III Landies and there it was compulsory) but up here in the Highlands every other person has a Yeti so it doesn't seem to be a thing :-(

My Yeti is only the second automatic I've ever owned (the first being a Range Rover). DSG is not the same beast as traditional hydraulic auto, it's just a manual gearbox controlled by the car. And in general it does a very good job at it and reads your mind pretty well. The only thing we both found initially, coming from driving a campervan where you had to be pretty binary on the throttle pedal, is that it's very sensitive to changes in pedal position when trying to anticipate your needs. My wife especially found she was more comfortable using manual mode initially but even she now generally leaves it in Drive most of the time. The only time I override the box is when I switch to S mode to overtake, but TBH most of the time you really don't need to. I really like the DSG transmission. I really think it's the future, at least until we all go electric.

Yeah, I've heard good things about them. My problem is that for medical reasons I can't drive 160 miles in a day. Thankfully we've got a good local garage who will be handling my routine servicing after the final AC service and MoT. They already changed the gearbox oil (and charged me considerably less than AC Skoda were quoting to do so).

That sort of thing is all too common when companies let ****ers design their web sites. 😞 Unless someone else takes on the Skoda dealership locally, so somewhere between Inverness and Elgin for me, my next car will not be a Skoda. Which is a shame.

No great loss. I've still got one pre-paid service and MoT with them but it's usable at any Arnold Clark and they've got a load of other dealerships in the same road so I guess I'll use one of those. I wonder if Hawco Group will take on the franchise now (assuming they survive). They're already VW/Audi so it would be an easy one to add to their portfolio ...

Yup, we've got summer and winter tyres on our camper van but for Zebedee I put on a set of Michelin CrossClimate Plus tyres and we're very happy with them: quiet and very grippy. Plus we're not having to spend about £50 every six months to get them swapped over.

So ... my local independent did the job today without bother. He did mention that there was a "surprising amount of crud" in the screen, so it definitely due. Anyway they billed me for 0.6 hours at £55 + VAT per hour, oil was the same price - to the penny - as AC Skoda (apparently there is no third party Haldex oil around so they have to use VAG's own). The total cost was £82.21 so still two thirds of the price of AC Skoda even at their discounted quote and 38% of their original quote. So a hat tip to Bitz Garage in Nairn. They've been looking after us for some years now on our other vehicle and seem to be competent and are, as you can see, reasonably priced (although I did tell him what AC Skoda quoted me and he's said perhaps he should put his prices up!).

They said they did, and I've had the filter vs screen conversation with them. We've been using them for some with our other vehicle and they seem to be competent. And thanks for the tip about Hawco VW.

So, for anyone who's been following my saga on this, the final outcome was that Arnold Clark Skoda in Inverness said that they weren't participating dealers despite what Skoda UK has said. I contacted Skoda UK again and they apologised and admittted that they'd got it wrong. They advised me to go to Victoria Garage in Maud instead. That's a two hour drive away, so a four hour round trip if I wait (which I would for this job as it doesn't take long) or two four hour trips if it's a bigger service item like a timing belt change. So the Skoda Fixed Price Plan is no bloody use at all, especially as I can't drive for two hours, let alone four, for health reasons. Meanwhile Arnold Clark Skoda, to whom I'd whined on their feedback form about the outrageous cost of the quote, came back to me with a "discounted" price of £128.11, down from £213.61. A quick fiddle with the calculator revealed that they'd re-priced it as 0.75 hours labour rather than 1.5. Given that my local independent garage have already said it would take them 30 minutes to an hour that means it wasn't a "discount" at all, it was just being realistically priced. Anyway as my local independent charge £55 + VAT per hour rather than £95 +VAT and they'e also three minutes drive and fifteen minutes walk away, rather than a half hour drive there and back, twice, plus £12 for a courtesy car you can guess who's doing Zebedee's Haldex oil change on Thursday.

Sadly AC are the only Skoda dealer hereabouts. The next nearest is about two hours drive away. Welcome to the highlands of Scotland.

I've just checked with Skoda and they are participating dealers. My car is about 10 days under three years old, so perhaps they're relying on that but I'll be phoning them up to shout at them.

Heh, Arnold Clark Skoda in Inverness just quoted me £213.61 to do this job. That included 1.5 hours labour at £95 + VAT per hour. My local independent garage said it would take them 30 minutes to an hour and they charge £55 + VAT per hour. Parts is another £35 + VAT on top or thereabouts. I'd not come across Skoda's Fixed Price Maintenance before but if Arnold Clark are obliged to do the job for a fixed price of £79 including VAT, which is what the web page implies, then they're living up to their nickname of Arnold Shark ...

I've tried both gumtree and various local selling groups on Facebook to sell tyres. The former was useless: one reply, from someone offering me 50% of my asking price. From FB on the other hand I had people biting my arm off and they sold very quickly, for the asking price, and without bother.