Thank you. I will complain to the manager about it when we collect the car. As I said before, we will have to pay the bill otherwise they will not release the car, but I would rather hope that since: a) they have had the car for 6 weeks, and b) they have essentially lied to us about the cost of repair, whatever the acual reason (I suspect a combination of incompetence & terrible customer service), they may be prepared to offer at least partial compensation. As I said, we were in the lucky position of being able to borrow a relative's car, I can't imagine the frustration if one or both of us were self-employed and relied on having two cars to make a living!

Not a particularly constructive response, but since you know me, I can't really argue with the logic of your statement. :-| I will get my hair cut on Saturday.

If anyone knows anything about where we might stand on this, please help! My girlfriend's car, an 02 plate MGTF with the 'infamous' Rover K-series engine, finally blew its head gasket 6 weeks ago, with about 57,000 miles on the clock. Being members of the AA, and also having Gold level AA warranty cover on the car, I called them and had the car taken to one of their authorised repairers, exactly SIX weeks ago. The garage sat on the car for the first four weeks, claiming that they were a few men down, and we let this pass as we have had access to a relative's car. After four weeks, we phoned the garage to complain about the wait and were told they were looking at it. A list of jobs the length of my arm was then formed and submitted to both us and the AA warranty people. The long and short of it is that they agreed to pay the first £750 of the repairs, and we would be liable for the remainder, a shade over £540 - expensive but ultimately necessary. Knowing that the work was scheduled to be finished today, my partner called them up, and was told "the gasket (as it was new) needed a modification on ladder rack to fit it". This is going to add another £200 to the bill, and they had already contacted the AA warranty people who had confirmed they wouldn't cover it. Problem is, they forgot to call us for authorisation and went ahead and did it anyway. Now I am aware that this extra work would always have been necessary and we would have had to pay for it, but to be told on the day of collection that our bill will be nearly 40% higher than verbally agreed is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. Obviously we are going to have to pay the bill to get the car released, but where do we stand on this from a legal perspective, as the garage essentially carried out additional, unauthorised work. It was going to be hard enough to scrape together more than half a grand in the first place, but all of a sudden it is nearly three quarters of a thousand pounds! Please tell me I have some rights to try and claim at least some of this back! Thanks for your time, long post I know but needed to get it off my chest!