It’s one of the oldest motoring tricks in the world: suck the customer in with the offer of a cheap service or half-price MOT, then stiff them for a load of unnecessary or overpriced work when the car “fails”. This is the sort of experience you might expect at Dodgy Dave’s back street garage, but not from one of the UK’s fastest growing car servicing companies – a firm that started out on BBC hit show Dragons’ Den.
But that is what apparently happened to Guardian Money reader Pam Kleinot after she asked Servicing Stop to give her Toyota Yaris a service and MOT.
Servicing Stop promises to take the hassle out of car servicing, collecting your vehicle, dealing with the garage, and then returning it to you by the end of the day. So Kleinot, a north London psychotherapist who admits she knows little about cars, happily agreed to pay £76 for an interim service and £19 for the MOT. However, she was staggered to receive a bill for more than £728 after being told her previously impeccable car had failed its MOT and was dangerous to drive without expensive repairs.
But she is only the latest customer to complain about the firm’s unexpected charges. Sites such as HonestJohn, TrustPilot and Moneysavingexpert feature tales of other consumers with similar claims. Servicing Stop, however, says it normally operates to the highest standards, has many thousands of happy customers every day, and is determined to stamp out this kind of practice among independent garages.
The firm was founded by brothers Oliver and Toby Richmond, who appeared on Dragons’ Den in 2009. They were offered £100,000 for a 30% stake by Deborah Meaden but subsequently found a better deal from an unnamed investor and didn’t take up the offer. Since then the company has grown quickly. Its aim is make the process of servicing “hassle free, convenient and cost effective”. It promises that all work conforms to manufacturers’ specifications and claims it has agreements with 1,500 garages in the UK. It makes its money by paying trade rates to the contracted garage, while charging the consumer a retail price.
But, as Kleinot found, the final bills can be staggering. Her Toyota Yaris, arguably one of the most reliable cars ever made, had just 17,000 miles on the clock and was taken to a north London garage called Holocene. Servicing Stop called her later that day to say the vehicle was dangerous to drive and needed lots of work, which left her “shocked”. “It was very surprising as the car, which was bought brand new in 2010, has never given me any trouble and always passed its MOTs with ease. I felt I had to pay up because I needed it back.”
Her experience prompted her to start researching Servicing Stop, and she discovered complaints from other owners that their cars also inexplicably needed extra work. “I decided to take the car to two other garages (including an official Toyota outlet) to get independent expert opinions on the CV joints on the front drive shaft, which I’d been told had failed,” she says. “As a result they’d been removed and refitted at a cost of £300. The first garage said the car hadn’t been touched – they said the part was dirty but in a good condition. The second garage said it did not appear to have been touched as ‘there was no evidence of grease, fingerprints or residue of oil’.”
This was not the only additional work. The invoice shows she was charged £63 to replace the pollen filter, even though these cost around £7 and can be fitted in minutes. She also paid £42 for headlamp alignment and £73 for the rear brakes to be stripped and cleaned – an unusual procedure given that pads are usually simply replaced if worn.
Kleinot says a written complaint about her treatment was ignored until Money intervened, when the firm moved quickly to offer a full refund.
A spokesman for Servicing Stop says the firm has apologised. “We recognise and admit our failings in this case, and would like to use it as an example of how seriously we take customer complaints. The garage in question is no longer an affiliated Servicing Stop garage. Every complaint is taken extremely seriously. Ultimately our ambition is to reform the current untrustworthy reputation of the UK’s independent garages,” he says.
However, Holocene garage paints a different picture. Director Vijay Pindoria told Money that all the work that had been charged for had been carried out. He agreed it was unusual for a low mileage car to require a CV joint cover to be replaced, but was adamant all the work was done as billed. “If you have questions about the charges you have to ask Servicing Stop. They take our bills and inflate the price to customer.” He said he’d charged about £120 for the CV joint cover; Kleinot paid Servicing Stop £259.
Asked why his company was claiming to be Retail Motor Industry Federation approved when the firm’s membership had lapsed in 2004, Pindoria said they were currently renewing it.
