My experience with average workshops and customer service -
Am typically pretty fussy when it comes down to who works on my car and what goes in it, so tend to shop around quite a bit. For the past 10 years or so we have always used the same workshop for all our cars for general servicing and they have been faultless in that respect. Whenever we thought about buying a car we would book it in for an inspection, would say he has definately saved me from a few lemons over the years.
With the Patrol there wasn't an opportunity to inspect it due to distance (down the coast). Anyway it was love at first site and just had to get it and figured once I got it home would book it in asap. So I booked it in for a once over and advised them to sort out the front wobble at the same time please call me if there are any issues. Meantime like most I jumped on the net to see if I could find anything at all on this issue, sure enough found 1000's of hits talking about it which was a little upsetting but same time felt confident they would sort it as it was a common issue it seemed.
Dropped it into my trusted mechanic on the day and awaited the inevitable phone call which I suspected would be something like
"yeah mate we found the problem, yeah we can sort it out no worries but it ain't gonna be cheap blah blah..." to my suprise no phone call, thought great they've sorted it. So go to collect car and $500 later I get my keys back, along with the suggestion it should go back to Nissan as it looks like a design issue, thanks see ya later. "Hang on what about the rest of the car" I says and was directed at a small leak on the diff other than that all good. Great I thought as I jumps in and fire it up. Driving home wtf, not only to find the problem wobble still there and if am not mistaken worse, it seems to be struggling to gain revs. so I pull up and callthe workshop office back suggesting the situation is now worse and bordering on dangerous and maybe someone should have suggested this when i picked it up and what exactly did they do to it and what are they going to do. Apparently it got a full tyre balance and rotate and a service, yes but what about the wobble?.. at which point the conversation started to derail as he was not expected to know every little thing that happened in his workshop and this was a specialised issue.
Anyway after the dust settles it appears I have lost a friendship with what i thought was a decent mech and basically been handed my hat and asked to take it elsewhere for that issue ... like Nissan. Am a bit wary of service centres as have been stung more than once with some really expensive services, but in anger I ring Nissan service anyway at which point am advised it could be anything and can get quite costly. Wow am thinking to myself if this guy thinks its going to be exy than I better start worrying. He says they had one bloke there who was experienced on these issues but he was on holidays though they would still be happy for me to bring it in for a look ($$$).
So now what, back onto the Net and start trawling the forums etc. I drove up the coast, I drove down the coast and spoke to anyone with an opinion. Finally worked my way to my current new mechanic, who has been nothing short of stellar in sorting my wagon out - decent bloke to boot.
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Originally Posted by Dan02
