HOW MUCH!

I lost the use of my horn a couple of weeks ago.

After much nagging from my wife I took my 98 V40 T4 into a Volvo dealer in Peterborough.

I dropped the car off expecting to pay around £50 to have it repaired.
I talked to the garage later in the day where they told me what a difficult job it had been to diagnose the problem and how much time had gone into resolving the issue.

Never a good sign when they put off telling you the price!
The chap then went on to say how he could only offer me a discount of 20% as the car is 6 years old (not sure what that has to do with anything!). More stalling before telling me the price.

He continued "So that comes to £301.59".

I do around 40,000 miles a year so I don't mind paying to make sure my car is in good running order but that seems a bit too steep.

Apparently they had to remove and check the wiring loom to find the damaged wire.

Have I been done?


When I went to pick my car up I noticed it was still as dirty as when I had dropped it off. Having just paid £300 for some work on it I expected it to now be clean.

To restore some degree of credibility I asked the guy who took my money if he could wipe a wet cloth over the lights and the windows so I could drive it home. His unamused expression was a picture. With a prompt of "That would be very good service" he drove my car round to the jet washer and proceeded to clean it for me.

[vjck_uk]

£300 is a bit steep ,but it could well have took a while to find a dodgy wire.
It would be easy to see if any power was getting to the various junctions (fuses,switches ect) but if the fault was in a not very accesible part of the loom then the time would soon clock up.
You could have had a look yourself before taking it in,check the fuse and see if any power was getting to the horn.
I can't get my head round the fact that you expected the car to be washed and valeted.
If they had of done this then you would be moaning that the garage had charged you for that when you did'nt ask for it.
I went with my son the other day to have a tyre on his and they never washed the car,I must complain about that the next time I go there.

He...He..He..He.... I can't stop laughing, I sure hope that you make plenty use of your **New** Gold Plated horn!!! Cos' for a little over 10 quid you could have bought a new horn from Halfords/GSF/ECP any one of them!! Usually its the Diaphragm in the horn that fails or there's a short in the horn that stops it from vibrating, very rarely is there a wiring loom fault (never found one yet that can't be sorted!!) AND it's held on to the car by a 13mm Nut, Dead Easy to remove!! So Yes, I sympathise a little when your car wasn't cleaned, for 300 nicker I'd expect it to be fully valeted and waxed for that kinda money.... what made you take it to the "Stealer" in the first place??? shop around, look for a Volvo mechy out with the Stealers, They're usually good for the "Simple" mechanical stuff, changing brakes, wheel bearings etc, tuning I'd leave to the "Stealer" as they have the "Software" to talk to the car, and they can stamp the book if required:-)

Giv'em 'ell on the Horn!!!:-)

Regards
Dave M

[Cypher007]

im gonna get a flame for this but, i find most of the volvo agents in lincolnshire to be ****e, especially cecil and larter spalding or tms as there now called. ive had numerous run ins with them and there attitude seems to be one of "please dont bring your smelly old J plate 850 here, its lowering the tone of the place". whereas if you turn up in a car less than 3 years old they roll out the red carpet. take for instance, i bought a 850 battery from them, i said do you store these without a charge inside, reply we just keep them on the shelf fully charged. ok so bought one took it home and it wanted a dam good charging according to my charger. so i looked at the date on the battery and i was something like week 33 02, my guess is it had been stood without charge for about 8 months, not good. so i decided to ask for a TDI version and pay a bit extra, they didnt have one, so i went around the guy at spalding and went to peterborough where they had one. they sold me the battery but because the spares guy had gone home on saturday i had to wait till the monday for a refund of the other battery, which incedently was sorted by the guy at spalding who when phoned me did not sound best pleased. another time they gave an mot to a car id just bought from another dealer, who had aranged for the mot and any work needed to get it upto spec. anyway when leaving the car for the mot i said that the windscreen wiper was not covering the drivers side and missed about the last 1/3 of the windscreen. so when i picked up the car i expected them to have put this right as its an mot issue, guess what nope. next where they replaced a bulb in the dash theyd cracked the dash and left half of it loose. the top engine mount had been replaced but they bent the arm doing it, so much so that the bolt sheared about a week later. so i took it back a few times each time it seemed far to much like hard work to get them to fix it. the wiper blade one was a good one, i watched them from the waiting room as three of them (not one of them an engineer) tried to get the blade off one of there second hand 850s and see if it would fit mine. when it was apparent it was the arm at fault instead of fitting a new arm they just did there best to bend the old one. to this day it still lifts off the screen at the last 10%.

[vjck_uk]

Hi there,
A most entertaining post,very true.

New batteries are best kept in stock 'dry charged'which will last indefinably with no deterioration.
When you buy one of these,do not have it fitted but take it home with you.
When a dry charged battery is filled with acid it's approximately 2/3rd's charged ,BUT it needs to stand ideally for a few hours to allow the plates to saturate ,and THEN charged to full capacity before use.
Doing this will really extend the battery performance and life.
Always check the electrolyte level after this as it may have dropped

[Cypher007]

did i mention the fact they always argue the toss over the 10% discount on parts, there supposed to give VOC members, and seem to always vary it. this went on until i contacted the VOC about it, they were very helpful and contacted TMS who have since confirmed that i should be getting 10% on parts.

[vjck_uk]

Johnsons at Redditch are very good about the discount and have'nt failed to give it up to now.