The nearside HID light died a few days ago (went purple for a day or so, then stopped working)and the MOT was due to expire on Saturday, so I booked it in to JKM in Portsmouth to have a new HID "bulb" fitted before the MOT on Saturday.

JKM fitted the new HID bulb at a fee of £111.60 on Friday. On Saturday, I took the car in for its MOT at Halfords. I got a call that day to tell me it had failed the MOT due to the aim of the nearside light beam being out!

Clearly, I'm unhappy about this as I took the car to JKM to have the lifgt fitted properly for the MOT the next day.

The MOT report says "Nearside headlamp aim beam image is obviously incorrect"

This is the ONLY thing it failed on.

They give more detail and state that "on investigation it was found that the internal reflector was insecure"

Clearly, JKM did a bodge job and their failure to install the bulb properly is the sole cause of the MOT failure.

This has meant that I have been unable to use the car over the bank holiday weekend.

I will be contacting them tomorrow and I expect them to refit the bulb properly and pay for the MOT retest and compensate me fir the cost of the half hour of labour I was charged by Halfords who investigated and diagnosed the problem.

I have spent £3900 at JKM in the last few months. I will be report back here to let you know if they properly compensate me for their cockup.

Cheers,

Chris

Usual dealer incompetence. VAG are so practised at this, it's pointless to argue - vote with your cheque book.

What they did was to push the optic unit off its ball stud - which is moved by the aiming motor. These Hella lamps are a crappy design and it's very easy to do, but it's pretty obvious when you've done it. Some Superbs suffered this fate on delivery when dropped off the transporter. Of course, the dealers didn't check the aiming on PDI...

It's easy to pull the optic unit back onto its stud in-situ with a little practice. I discovered this when converting my lamps to RH dip (which the dealer said couldn't be done without removing the lamps - £200 per trip - idiots). You can feel the location of the stud and use a right angled screwdriver through the rear hatch to pop the unit back onto its stud. Like some other things in life, it's easier to do with practice than it is to describe...

Thanks for naming the dealer - this is what's needed.

rotodiesel.

Imho you should afford Jim, Kate and the team the opportunity to put things right before having a rant on here.

They (JKM) are well respected forum sponsors and this sort of post does not give them the opportunity to 'right a wrong' before publishing a 'bad review'.

Coming from a perspective of someone who works in customer service, this sort of 'internet warrior' stuff boils my blood.

As for 'naming the dealer, this is what is needed' god forbid you'd ever be able to make a mistake and be allowed to put it right.

Imho you should afford Jim, Kate and the team the opportunity to put things right before having a rant on here.

They (JKM) are well respected forum sponsors and this sort of post does not give them the opportunity to 'right a wrong' before publishing a 'bad review'.

Coming from a perspective of someone who works in customer service, this sort of 'internet warrior' stuff boils my blood.

As for 'naming the dealer, this is what is needed' god forbid you'd ever be able to make a mistake and be allowed to put it right.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment expressed by Jonny5ive: doesn't paying dealer prices entitle us to a proper level of service, ensuring a proper job is done in the first place, and not the sort of bodge-job you'd expect from a back-street garage?

Also coming from a "customer service" point of view (and in most cases for "her" most important day) we aim to avoid mistakes in the first place...............by checking and re-checking what we do. 99.9% of the time avoidance is so much easier than trying to put it right.

JKM are not a dealer, they an independent garage that carryout servicing and fitting of performance parts and remaps. Briskoda have a very good relationship with them and have held numerous Rolling Road days there in the past. Mistakes do happen, as they do anywhere and I am sure Kate and the rest of the staff will sort the problem for Chris.

£111.60 is not dealer prices, you'd be paying that for the bulb alone at a dealer plus the labour to fit it.

They (JKM) are well respected forum sponsors and this sort of post does not give them the opportunity to 'right a wrong' before publishing a 'bad review'.

i couldnt agree more, they've always looked after me in the past, they are one of the very few garages i would ever entrust my vehicles to, i think this concept of publicly slating them in this manner is a touch unfair until you've given them an opportunity to sort the issues out.

i would have thought that any beam settings would have been checked before leaving the workshop, it may just be that the replacement lamp has a different filament design, and hence a different image pattern, and the monkeys ay halfords are too thick to realise,

Everyone makes mistakes (assuming it is a mistake) and tarring someone's reputation on a forum before they have a chance to look at the car or give you a report is just bad form to be honest.

Had this happened to me personally I would have contacted JKM before posting anything on here as it gives them an opportunity to correct if it is their mistake.

As it's now tomorrow how did you get on regarding "compensation for their cockup"?

Did you know JKM are an MOT testing station?

People make mistakes, it happens. I wouldn't go broadcasting to all and sundry that someone had cocked up without giving them the chance to correct their mistake.

I garage I used to use made a mistake once and they dealt with the issue very well and I was left happy that everything was OK and I used them again after that without issue.

If someone cocks up and won't resolve the problem then I will shout loudly from the rooftops for all and sundry to her about.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

I took the car back to JKM and they have refitted the light and also aligned them. They also replaced a sidelight bulb - all at no cost.

The bulb had been disconnected by Halfords when they examined the light after it had failed the alignment test.

The bottom line is, there is no way of knowing if it is the fitting of the bulb that was the cause of the beam being out (the previous bulb was in alignment as it passed all previous MOTs)

It is being retested at Halfords tomorrow morning - if they say the alignment is out this time, I will challenge them on this as I believe JKM will have done a good job.

For those that have been saying I have slimed JKM, I have not, I have simply stated fact based on evidence. I clearly said I would post back reporting if they kept me happy - which they have.

I have used JKM for several years now and found them to be the best garage I have ever used - hence my spending several thousand with them. If you look around these forums, you will see I have stated several times that I believe they are great and have recommended friends use them.

In any case, as I say, JKM have now delivered and Im happy.

"Refitted the light" - what does that mean?

Issue fudged, evidence lost. Ask them what they did wrongly when changing the lamp which caused it to fail a subsequent MOT beamsetter test. Obviously, they should have checked the beam alignment after a lamp change - as detailed in the owner's manual.

Having worked on these crappy Hella light units, I'm pretty sure they displaced the optical unit - as suggested by Halfords' comment of the "reflector being out of position". Of course, these lamps don't use conventional reflectors....

If you pay an organisation that amount of money to change a light bulb you expect a properly executed and tested job. Instead they leave the vehicle unroadworthy.

I rest my case.

rotodiesel.

The words mountain and molehill spring to mind.

I think this has ran its course, and as resolved I want to lock this to not portray JKM in a poor light.

Feel free to post a more balanced report of what happened in JKM's forum if necessary