Car service Darwin

If her knows you are a blow in, you are lucky to get an appointment in those Top End places under two weeks.

I travelled through there a couple of years ago and found that any work I wanted done, would entail a wait of a week at least. Then the cost was double what I pay at home.

There is a bloke in Broome, who is supporting his extended family on what he charges and keeps the locals in bull meat, albeit he is doing a community service by putting the wounded animals out of their misery!

I get the CP manager to recommend someone and make sure they know that's how I got their name. Then the manager gets a report.

bill

A series of postings maligning Darwin businesses (and elsewhere) without some understanding of the real world. While I have had shoddy dealings with a few places up here, over years of dealings with Southern ones we are most definitely not alone in poor or expensive service. Get over it people as your own places aren't exactly something to praise, it's just that you have more choices and in many cases you aren't in a booming area with a shortage of qualified trades people. Inability to get suitable staff, or any staff, affects the Darwin general businesses while qualified trades people are going to the mining/gas industries where they are paid more. Therefore other places have to also pay higher wages to attract staff and cover their expensive accommodation. In the end it's us that have to bear the cost and time delays when we want work done and join the queue of people wanting similar. It's not the repair places that are to blame for your urgent requirement for repair and servicing. The same all goes for other remote areas that are often also the subject of complaints like this across many Forum's.

My most recent interstate case was something ordered from Brisbane. Despite the Company missing the deadline that they agreed to for sending the items they then just lazily used their normal freight company and they trucked it to Sydney, then Adelaide then on a slow freight train to Darwin. I could have driven to Brisbane and personally picked it up and beaten the train back here.

In another case where a Darwin vehicle Dealer wasn't to blame for the delay a replacement oxygen sensor was required. Nationally there wasn't another in the country. The replacement had to come from Japan but the national office only ordered one but it was found to be faulty when it finally arrive up here weeks later. More weeks delay then happened. I suppose a whingeing holiday maker would be blaming the local Dealer for them being inconvenienced.

In the particular case of the Darwin Nissan Dealer I did have many dealings with them some years ago and they were having significant problems attracting staff, as were many other businesses. We have a very low unemployment rate up here and despite interstate advertising for vacancies many places just couldn't get enough applicants across a wide range of trades. The only way out was for recruitment from overseas to fill the gaps. It seems that welfare is just too easy as against moving to where the jobs are.

I understand and accept the higher cost for services and goods in outback and remote areas, but I cannot understand and will not accept rip-offs.

A dealer for my brand in Charters Towers tried to charge me $90 for an out-of-schedule handbrake adjustment. "Sir, on that model we have to remove the hubs to access the parking brake adjustment." BS. You access the adjustment through a hole in the hub, and since they had the wheels off to inspect the brake pads it was no more than a 5 minute job. When challenged they took off the $90, they knew it was a rip.

I suspect the same with steamfire's very expensive oil - an attempted rip with their bluff called.

It's not confined to rural/regional/outback/remote service people. At pick-up time my own suburban dealer on the last service read off a list from the job sheet of what had been done. One was topping up the battery - you can't it's sealed. Another was an engine wash - it hadn't been done, there was still general dust and dirt and oil around the filter. Another was refilling the washer bottle. Not done. They did a wheel rotation and overtightened all the wheel nuts (presumably with a rattle gun) to such an extent I couldn't undo them, even by standing on the wheel wrench and bouncing. With my weight and the length of the wheel wrench I work that out to be in excess of 230Nm. Spec is 130.

Except for the wheel nuts, those are piddling items listed, I suppose, to impress me but they were lies. I wasn't impressed. I'm a regular there, I bought the vehicle from them. I asked the service manager, "If these weren't done, what else hasn't been done? The wheel nuts have been grossly over-torqued. How can I have confidence in your work? Why should I come back?" There weren't any answers other than an apology, but they did take $100 off the bill and re-torqued all wheel nuts by hand with a torque wrench - I watched them. They used to be good, but since their ace workshop foreman left, well, I dunno. I don't know if I'll go back, I have 10k to think about it.