Susan M
a month ago
Needed an MOT done. Usually I put my car into a local guy but he was busy, but I remembered SMS Alloa and they were able to see our car the next day - I've generally had positive experiences with them so I thought I could trust them.
Now my car was running well, no problem with starting up in the cold winter mornings and the engine had never cut out on me. A generally healthy car - compared to other bangers I've owned. My husband has a background in engineering and we have a car mechanic friend who helps us out with car issues too.
My husband drove the car into the garage (working perfectly). We got a call back telling us the MOT had failed - which is fair enough, but it had failed massively as the car now wouldn't even start. The battery and altenator had miraculously just stopped working. For repairs they billed us £1000. £300 of which was for an exhaust issue.
We went to pick up the car and both me and my husband felt something wasn't right. The woman wasn't helpful and said "these things just happen" but she kept repeating it which made me even more suspicious. She said it's all there and pointed to the certificate with all the problems but didn't elaborate - she must have thought we were idiots.
Paid for the MOT but not the repairs, something just didn't feel quite right. I was livid, they jump started our car and we left. When you put a car into a garage you expect to get your car back in the same or better condition, but not worse condition.
We bought the parts ourselves from independent suppliers, and our mechanic friend did the repairs. The total cost of all the parts we needed came to less than £250, and the time our friend took to do the repairs was less than 5 hours.
(The exhaust itself cost £100 and took less than an hour to change.)
We redid our MOT with our local guy and it passed.
Interestingly enough, SMS Alloa had given advisories on two of the tires, which actually didn't show up on my second MOT certificate at all.
Safe to say I won't be using SMS Alloa again.
