Advice regarding suspected Insurance/Car Repair scam in Rouen

I am convinced that I was 'scammed' during a journey through Rouen In September, 2013.
WHAT HAPPENED?

My Ford Mondeo estate developed a rumbling noise from the rear quarters, when cornering.

I have Breakdown insurance with Inter Partner Assistance, (IPA), through Swinton Insurance of UK, for the Continent.

I phoned for help, and they arrived in about 45 mins, listened to my explanation, then took the car away to a Renault agency garage at Canteleu, (approximately 15 kms from where I had abandoned my journey)


(I subsequently discovered that they had passed a Main Ford dealer 7 kms from where they collected me!)

They quoted me 655,22 euro ( = £551 on my Credit Card)

Hobson's choice dictated that I accept their quote, and the job was completed.

(230 miles from my destination, Family with me, two hotel rooms/night, car loaded with 'stuff', rusty 'schoolboy' french', only a short holiday anyway, etc)

I got two quotes in UK; the highest, from the local Main Ford Dealer, was for £315, inclusive of all costs and taxes. (The parts were priced at £262.21, incl VAT, and labour £48 inclVAT)
My 'regular' garage in UK quoted £225.19 'all-in' IPA have rejected my complaint of opportunistic overcharging, pointing out that UK prices meant nothing in France.

In order to progress my case with the Ombudsman, I desperately need to find the cost in France for 'Supply & fit replacement combined set of hub & wheel bearings for a Ford Mondeo diesel estate car, 2.0 litre offside rear wheel,year 2003'

In the UK, all the Main Ford Dealers have a comprehensive price list for maintenance jobs, and if the same system existed in France, there just might be somebody who could try to obtain a printed quotation with minimum effort (?) by the garage.

If anyone is willing to 'have a go', please do let me know if you need more information.

I will very grateful for any help, and will compensate for any costs

Thanks
John Acton

I want to send you the facture for my bearings, but in a private mail, rather than plastered on here, as my address is on it... I can only do that if we are listed as "friends" on here, so I've sent you a request for "friendship".

Hi Jane,

Apologies to you, I been reading through all the response emails , and I realise that I did not answer your message.

Sorry about that omission, it was Seasonal pressures, plus spending a week with my daughter and the new grandchild on the Isle of Skye just after sending the call for help through S.F.N (Not smart timing !)

Please accept my thanks now, I really did appreciate your message of support, at a time when not everyone was on my side.

I will be appealing to the Ombudsman soon, and I will send word of the outcome via S.F.N

Thanks again,

John

Hi Jane,

Apologies to you, I been reading through all the response emails , and I realise that I did not answer your message.

Sorry about that omission, it was Seasonal pressures, plus spending a week with my daughter and the new grandchild on the Isle of Skye just after sending the call for help through S.F.N (Not smart timing !)

Let me thank you now, I really did appreciate your message of support, at a time when not everyone was on my side.

I hope to appeal to the Ombudsman soon, and I will send word of the outcome via S.F.N

Thanks again,

John

Hi, Zoe,

I'm not sure what you you are saying in your latest message--could you send more explanation about what you want me to accept, please?

Regards,

John

I've sent you a friend request... when you accept, I'll send the facture, I've already scanned and saved it in my laptop.

Sorry, I didn't explain very well did I, Zoe.

I was making the point that the breakdown insurance company, (IPA), had two totally unacceptable exclusions in their T & Cs; they excluded any complaints on the grounds of costs of repair (my gripe), and on grounds of quality of parts or of workmanship (I have no complaints on either of the last two items, in fact, the Garage gave a written 12 month guarantee in writing on their Facture .

So I wasn't taking a pot at French mechs, rather that IPA had chosen to highlight exclusions that should have been anathema to any reputable Service company.

I hope that the pressure on you eases soon, perhaps after the Christmas 'rush'.?

I am looking forward to getting closure on this whole thing.

I have received only one letter from IPA, which was a refusal to make any compensation on the grounds of their Exclusions.

I wrote back, asking if they could find out a typical cost for the work from, say a main Ford Dealer in France, using their contacts in the French motoring businesses, and also requesting a Claims form for our hotel costs during the breakdown period.

Although there were no exclusions against hotel expenses in their T & Cs, they avoided paying up; they just didn't send the Claims form!

Hope you are able to send your Facture when things are easier for you, and thanks for your support

Best Seasonal wishes,

John

I'll try get my bearings facture sent your way in the next few days, but the hotel has been completely up the walls, and I've been putting in a lot of hours of late.

In any case... you seem so sure that you have been scammed, that now you're implying that the workmanship was shoddy, and the parts are inferior.
I would say to just be happy your car didn't just rumble on for 250 k, and then let you down again, because that's happened to me on numerous occasions in France.
Everytime Itake a car to a mech, they always ask "who did the last job on this"...... seems everyone is trying to out-do each other in some war of trust.

Wow, Zoe, I have just reached your other two messages from 16th Dec., and you may have cracked it already!

What make and model is your car, and what is the engine size?

The larger the car, the more costly the parts and labour, and my car is a Ford mondeo, 2.0 litre diesel.

The Fords are now all-in-one unit, combining new hub and bearings, but the garage in Rouen would have installed a complete new unit. (The old units are not available anymore).

Also, if the bearings in your car were renewed without a new hub, (ie the 'older ' design), that would presumably be cheaper than the new technology system that Fords now use.

Is there any chance that you could send me a copy of your facture, with price breakdown and job description, to tell me if it involved the combined hub and bearings.

(by attachment if you are more PC canny than I am :-)

(my email is < john.acton1@ntlworld.com > )

Regarding your final email, there was only one set of bearings replaced. (I can see the outer part of the job, and it is noticeably newer than the other three wheels

Hope I've clarified all this; I've just reread it, and it's not too clear to me!

Cheers,

John

Thanks for your response, Zoe, you made some very interesting points, from which I took great encouragement.

In order to be brief I was too brief in information, so I will provide more info.

> The Towtruck livery was Garage Deliens,

> The Garage name was Garage Deliens.

> In declining my claim, IPA Breakdown Insurance quoted the following items from their Terms & Conditions

"Sectiom E-General Exclusion applying to all parts of this policy

What is not covered:

6. The cost and guaranteeing the quality of repairs when your vehicle is repaired in any garage to which the vehicle is taken"

From this, they are saying that the garage THAT THEY SPECIFIED, could charge whatever price they wished, using inferior parts, installed by unskilled labour.

If I was running a Breakdown Insurance company, I would make sure that the garage that I instructed did a good quality repair at a reasonable price, because my business reputation depended on it

I will make this point to the Ombudsman, but the key point is the over-charging, which is dependent on obtaining comparative prices for the same job, in France and UK.

The quote that you obtained of 'around 500 euros' was 155 euros below what I paid, ie around 30% less, and presumably your man would be making a reasonable profit at 500 euros?

Thanks again for your interest and support, any further thoughts and information will be appreciated.

Regards,

John

Apologies for the delay in answering your last message, I have just returned from holiday.

From a general point of view, I can only support Zoe when she says that generally repairs are cheaper here than in UK.

We always use the Mercedes main dealer in Macon, who is about the same price that I used to pay to my very good non-main dealer garage back in Nailsworth.

Also, you didn't indicate, but they seem to have changed BOTH bearings, when only one might have needed changing.

If it's just the price of bearings, I had that done for one wheel about two months ago, the whole bill for one roulement job was 189.10. Paid 41.60 in labour, and the rest in parts, plus the participation they force on you of disposing of your old parts. 21 veuro of that was for an unrelated job.

Thanks for the reasoning, Gerald, I must say that I had second thoughts when a guy raised the question on SFN a few weeks ago "Why is everything so expensive in France?"

That is why I am seeking info from members who can tell me what IS the charge in France for wheel bearings replacement. (ie, do garage 'chains' have fixed prices for set jobs, as per UK?)

Cheers,

John

I can see how you might be fuming, of course you believe you were "scammed", but if you were, it's not the insurance company who has ripped you off. They've only done what they're paid to do, by contacting the depanneur.
The depanneur, in turn has only done what he is paid to do, by hauling your car to a garage. This is why the law here allows you to tell any depanneur (towing company) which garage YOU want the car to be taken to.

If anything, your gripe is with the garage itself. We cannot blame the insurance company here. It's like blaming an airline company when the destination/hotel is not to our liking.
I've called up my mechanic, he is away till just after new year, but I've asked around how much the job SOHULD cost to one of his workers, and after a couple of seconds of looking through his computer, he came up with the magic number of "around 500" (Euro) I'm not sure if that's any help to you. In saying that, I know that if I had asked Alain for the quote, it would have been a bit cheaper.


There is a crooked garage up the road, I will pop up and ask him for a quote if I can have enough time off during the week.

That the cost did not seem out of the way to me. I have got past the stage of being surprised at the cost of things in France. A friend recently had a starter motor replaced and was charged €500. He is a French guy and he thought it normal. Perhaps you were scammed, but it is only because everyone gets scammed...

Hi, Zoe, and thanks for your response.

I take your point alright, but I didn't know either name or address of any garage in the whole of France, never mind one in L'Absie, 200 miles from Rouen, so I was bound to lose out.

I have certainly learned a lot from this incident, and I hope that I would have a different outcome in France in any future incident!

Interestingly, I don't expect that things would follow the same path if my car had a breakdown in the UK, but then 'you don't know until it happens to you :-)

It hadn't crossed my mind to try to get the price of the 'kit' from a supplier (I assume that Oscaro.com might price the parts for me; the Facture appears only to refer to 'PAM' to identify the Part, which they price at 547 euros compared to Labour , at 82 euros (both excluding TVA). I suspect that PMA may just be an abbreviation for the item, but I will follow that lead.

Finally, do you think that your garagiste might be full enough of Seasonal Good Feelings to print out a quotation for renewal of wheel bearings to my Mondeo digital estate (full details of car in my reply to Veronique)

Thanks for the suggestion

John

PS Sorry to be so 'pushy' but I'm sure you can see how desperate I am :-)

I can't see where the scam is here John. Your insurance presumably paid the cost of your recovery to a garage who repaired your car. The garage repaired your or car expeditiously unlike in the UK where you would probably have faced the usual tooth sucking "can't do much about it till next week gov". You think you have been overcharged but this is only in comparison to UK prices where more than likely the kid on an "apprenticeship" rather than a trained mechanic would have done the job; The "agency" system in UK is not so strong here and garages are used to repairing all marques for a price. Your insurance gives you roadside assistance or recovery to a repairer but you have the responsability for the cost of repair. If you had travel insurance rolled in to your policy then your insurance company would be picking up the tab for your hotel. As Gerald says the cost of your repair doesn't seem over the top.

Hi Gerald, are you saying that the cost seems reasonable, or that you aren't surprised that a Brit has been overcharged? :-)

Cheers,

John

Thanks for your reply,Veronique, and please excuse the lack of 'accenting' on my British computor I rang the contact number in England, supplied by Swinton Insurance. (They had already told me that they subcontracted the service to a British-based company in Surrey, vis I. P. A.).

They took down the details, including our location, and arranged for the tow truck.

The driver of the tow truck had no english at all, smiled throughout, appeared to understand enough of my french to satisfy him, gave me his card with the garage address on it, and off he went, still smiling)

We booked two rooms at a hotel, and a girl from the garage rang later that day to confirm (in english) that the wheel bearings had failed, and that the job would be 'tres cher'. (She said that before telling me the price!) I had no phone numbers, nor car, to obtain other quotation We will not be back in France until April 2014, when it will be too late to approach the Ombudsman. I I can only hope that a member of SFN with a 'friendly' Garage, and a computer which can print out a quotation for the work (as detailed in my original outline of the incident.) It is important to include all the car details in the 'Quote', so that they cannot wriggle out of liability on a technicality; The part No was F4858822 N/Stock Hub Assembly-Wheel Bearings from the Main Ford Dealer in England, and vehicle identified as

Ford Mondeo 2.0 L Dtorq 5dr 130 bhp Chassis No WF0WXXGBBW3S38180 Reg Date09/10/2003

My garage in England gave the Part No as GHK1954, (probably from his supplier catalogue) he did the print-out in less than 4 minutes, and he is way below 2nd-tier ratings)

Sorry for all the technical stuff, and thanks for your interest

John