Garage broke wheel locks and i have to pay for it

[JodiSte]

Hi everybody, a couple of weeks ago I brought my car to an authorised MOT garage to get my MOT done, the car failed the MOT and one of the reasons was a bad tyre. After quoting me a very expensive amount of money to replace the tyre (only 1 as they said it is not neccessary to replace all tyres on an achsle?!) I agreed to have it done. A day later they called me telling me that while trying to get the locked wheel nuts off, they broke the key and advising me that based on Renault these wheel nuts are not in stock anymore as they were regulary breaking. I said to them to replace them with standard wheel nuts which I had in boot of my car.
When I went to pick-up the car and checked the bill I saw that they wre charging me £45 for drilling the lockable wheel-nuts out.
I am really confused now, first they break it and then I have to pay for the repair.
I paid fot it now as I needed my car, but has anyone an idea what I should do?

Thanks
John

[chiefengineer]

Personally I would get an estimate of the cost to put the damage right, and write to the garage concerned claiming the cost back.

If they have damaged your car, they should pay for it.

Jeremy

[syrill-sneer]

If the locking wheel nuts were over tightened, than it is pretty common for the locking wheel nut key to break whilst trying to remove them, I work at a Ford garage and Ford Galaxy's are pretty common for this to happen.
So the problem lies with the last person to tighten that perticular wheel(s), not the garage who recentley tried to removed them, as there is a good chance that if you had a puncture and tried to remove the locking wheel nut your self you would either break the key or wouldnt be able to remove the nut and the next person to attempt to remove the nut would break it.
The price seems pretty fair, I would estimate that it could easily take up to an hour, plus any tools/drill bits they damaged in the process.