Hello,

I'm having hard time with a mobile mechanic service.

I booked an appointment for a non-starting corsa via a popular online service and was given a timeslot between 8am and 10am for the mechanic to come. I provided my phone number and debit card details while booking the appointment online.

At the day of the appointment I stayed home instead of going to work wating for the mechanic. I waited in my appartment, which is on the 3rd floor in a block of flats.

No one calls me and at 9:28am I received a text message from them that the mechanic has been waiting on the address since 9:05am and that they give me 5 minutes or the mechanic will have to leave.

I start calling and am not able to get in contact until 9:50am when I'm told that unfortunately the mechanic has left and I will have to make another appointment. I am charged for the appointment £46.80 and receive an email proposing another appointment.

They insist that the mechanic tried calling me which never did, I tried calling instead. They also say the mechanic tried buzzing which might be true, and the buzzer is probably not working properly, but still they never tried calling me like they insist.

I complained on the webite's resolution center and they refuse to refund insisting the mechanic was there and tried buzzing and calling me. All the evidence they've uploaded is a screenshot of the text message from the mechanic's phone with the date and time. I have a screenshot from my phone showing my call details.

I'm waiting for the case to be escalated via their resolution center.

What can I do in case they refuse to refund ? This looks like sc@m to me.

Contact your bank and begin the chargeback procedure. This should eventually get your money back although it will take a bit of effort. This is the easiest way. Getting the money back for the lost day's work would be trickier and probably not worth the trouble.

However, I do have to say that you know that you've got a buzzer that doesn't work properly. I think that you should have flagged that up to them when you made the appointment. I've got no comment to make on the discrepancy between the two versions relating to the phone call.

When you got the text giving you 5 mins would it not have been better to go down to the car, rather than spending 45 minutes trying to call the company?

But I have to say I can see them challenging a reclaim if they can show calls were made via the engineers call log, so it might be worth trying to get a hold of it via them before going too far.