Ok, here’s what’s been happening recently. I picked up a puncture at the weekend (a wee screw in my rear tyre). The tyre never lost on pressure so I didn’t get it fixed immediately. On Tuesday I took leave of my senses and popped into my local Kwik Fit on my way home from work.
The place was empty so my car was taken in straight away and put up on their two poster car lift. My concern began when the grease monkey didn’t know where the locking wheel key was. After I pointed to the boot I stood next to the car and watched him work. He noticed the wheels were ‘painted’, an aftermarket exhaust and the unmissable WALK bushes. :smile: I told him a few things about the Golf so he was sure to know I was at least semi intelligent towards car, etc. He couldn’t get the wheel off (probably due to it being powder-coated and being slightly tighter on the spigot. I have managed to remove all 4 wheels (for cleaning) before so I knew it wasn’t that tight. He decided a heavy rubber mallet was needed and after a handful of bashes the wheel came off and promptly fell some distance to the ground. Like buttered toast it landed face down first with an audible clunk. I didn’t complain immediately because I needed them to fix the puncture. Kwik Twit’s are well known for deciding not to fix the puncture just because they don’t like the look of the customer. They wouldn’t fix it anyway, stating that I must have run on the tyre completely flat (no chance) and that it wasn’t repairable. They then offered to replace my 5mm Toyo T1R with an asymmetric (to compliment my 3 other directional tyres) Ying Yong tyre for
a reasonable twice the normal price.
I politely told them where to go and left with my spare wheel on. I got home (5 mins away) and opened the boot, where they’d slung the wheel, and took pictures. With these being time-stamped and showing that they’d thrown my wheel on top of my personal possession (clothes, jigsaw puzzle, tools) I phoned the Thick Twit’s manager and told him what had happened. I was asked to come back and shown them the damage the next day.
Yesterday I went back and got the manager to look at the wheel/tyre in my boot. I specifically hadn’t touched it or moved any of my things underneath in order to show him exactly how I found it. His first reaction was that the damage was old, “See how there’s bubbling round about the damage there.” So I explained that powdercoat doesn’t bubble. “Well it’s rust then” he claims. My engineering degree helps explain to him the incredibly low iron content that Aluminium alloy contains (zilch). Finally I took him the workshop floor and pointed to him the dent in the floor where my wheel had landed and where flakes of my exact colour of wheel powdercoat still were. He conceded that yeah they were to blame and asked me to leave the wheel with them and he would get a company to repair it. After asking who it was (I deal with a few local wheel companies) he stated it’d be a ‘professional’ company, I pressed further and he replied ‘a sandblasting company’. After some more to-ing and fro-ing I have eventually managed to get it repaired at the company of my choice, i.e. the company who originally powdercoated the wheel. And Thick Twit’s will foot the bill. They also offered vouchers to compensate for the poor service. I told them I’d never set foot in a Kwik Fit branch again so no point taking the vouchers.
Result: one wheel re-finished as new. Puncture repaired by powder-coating company (no fuss) and I had a chance to have a good butcher’s under my car while it was on their lift. I’ve noticed some of my tyres are low so will be ordering new tyres thru the powdercoating company. Hopefully getting the wheel re-powdercoated and new tyres on next week.
Rant over.
