George Fraser, Wembley.

[Alps]

used him once, years back, wasnt too pleased with the work so didnt use him again! seems like he has gone from bad to worse!!

 

[KLP 92]

What can i say.....

Not surprised in all honesty. Its a real shame as George is a top bloke, and i still have alot of respect for him as a person. He's bailed me out on a few personal troubles in the past, something that i will always be grateful for.

There was a time when i spoke very highly of his workmanship but recent lay offs have left him understaffed and overworked. His apprentices are doing most of the work there and make simple errors.

In all honesty all thats been said in the Gazette is true. I sent a friend down with a S320 CDI for a gearbox build. to this date the guy still moans at me because his car was driven 600 miles in 3 days.

Simal (aka$h) left his car there for work. When it came back he found crisp bags in the side door pockets items missing from the car.

I could see this day coming for a long time. I spent thousands personally on the SEC in this garage and the car still wasn't 100% when it left, a full 18 months later.

 

[NW_Merc]

Is the beast 100% now though Nav?

 

[KLP 92]

Is the beast 100% now though Nav?

My water pump needs changing agian. Died a premature death at 14 months due to an overtightened fan belt creating extra tension on the water pump pulley. No needs to guess where the pump was changed

I'll fix it at some point, just been really busy!

 

[aka$h]

I had intermittent power loss on my s-class. I took the car to george and tolod him to check the egr valve first, he told me he fitted a new one and the problem was still there. During a period of 6 months the car sat at his garage for a total of 2.5 months. His final conclusion was to replace the turbo.
Id have enough, and took the car to another specialist and then decided to get the turbo rebuilt. The car was also showing faults with the esp module, thinking the 2 things might be related the module was replaced. This did not cure the fault, we then thought backpressure may be an issue, due to blocked cats, these were removed.
In the end I decided to remove the egr valve, I found it was totally blocked and very mucky inside.
George clearly did not replace it, this cost me around £3-4k.

As Nav has mentioned already, when I got my car back the tv had been messed around with and there were ice cream wrappers in the door pockets. The mileage had gone up, and the car always came back with the fuel on reserve. I had to get a full valet to get rid of the grease marks all over the interior.

George is a nice bloke, but needs a BIG lesson on how to run a business. George fraser as a garage are incompetent and have no respect for customers cars.

 

[Dee-124CAB]

It seems to me, with all these reports of cars that go there & then return with next to no fuel, mileages going up in hundreds of miles within days, litter left in interiors.... There seems to enough evidence there to support the possibility that customers cars are being used a courtesy cars.....Or maybe even staff are using them as 'company cars'.... what other viable explanation can there be? If true,that is just out of order.

 

[big x]

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=34529

GF wouldn't last 5 minutes in the sticks

.
With a smaller client base word gets around. The excuse about the calliper bolt breaking is ludicrous, the bolts are massive.
In London the high transient population means conmen can make a good living.

adam

 

[Flash]

GF has gone down hill big time and I have heard many similar stories of cars being returned with a couple of hundred miles on the clock!

 

[jaymanek]

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=34529

GF wouldn't last 5 minutes in the sticks

.
With a smaller client base word gets around. The excuse about the calliper bolt breaking is ludicrous, the bolts are massive.
In London the high transient population means conmen can make a good living.

adam

Think that post on mercedesclub sums it all up really well...

 

[nick mercedes]

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=34529

GF wouldn't last 5 minutes in the sticks

.
With a smaller client base word gets around. The excuse about the calliper bolt breaking is ludicrous, the bolts are massive.
In London the high transient population means conmen can make a good living.

adam

Not everything that is posted to internet forums can be relied upon to be the absolute truth...

"Even more shocking is the fact NO parts used are genuine MB parts."

"Mosty shocking of all is that most of the servicing is done by people barely in their teens."

Both the above seem very hard to beleive.

 

[robert.saunders]

Think that post on mercedesclub sums it all up really well...

What is this other site you speak of..?

 

[grober]

What is this other site you speak of..?

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=34529

 

[jaymanek]

What is this other site you speak of..?

its the link someone provided above...


by the way, most garage will use OEM standard parts...there are not many mercedes specialists that will ignore the fact that you can buy OE standard parts from Euro Car Parts for half the dealer price..

we use hengst parts from Euro for almost all our servicing unless the customer specifies otherwise..

 

[KLP 92]

Not everything that is posted to internet forums can be relied upon to be the absolute truth...

"Even more shocking is the fact NO parts used are genuine MB parts."

"Mosty shocking of all is that most of the servicing is done by people barely in their teens."

Both the above seem very hard to beleive.

He does use apprentices, some of how are quite young, but most garages use them.

Most parts used in there are OE pattern parts, but thats the reason why the bill is kept low.

 

[big x]

Most parts used in there are pattern parts, but thats the reason why the bill is kept low.

I hope that's not correct.The likes of GF tend to use parts by known OE manufacturers, not cheap pattern parts that ECP call AQ.Their mark up comes from the fact they get 20-30% discount from GSF, ECP and KMS.
Last month a bought a pair of German made Lemforder aluminium thrust control arms for my BMW from ECP. Lemforder/Sachs/boge are part of the ZF group who make all of the BMW suspension parts.The arm came in original Lemforder packaging however the BMW logo and part number had been filed off the arm. Clearly Lemforder use a single casting and do the alteration if supplying factors. ECP also source other stuff in OE BMW packaging from third world countries that have cheaper pricing structures.They then simply cross out the bar code identifying the source country.All this means I paid less than half the price quoted by my BMW dealer even with their "generous discount".
The problems come if someone bought a pattern thrust control arm also stocked by ECP. The no name bushes just aren't up to the job and will last a third of the distance.
Marque specialists know this and it would be somewhat disingenuous of them to supply pattern parts in critical areas like this. I suppose the temptation of !00% parts mark ups might be to much for some





adam

 

[fredfloggle]

I reckon that you guys should give GF to post his side of the story, if he refuses then probably enough has been said.

 

[jaymanek]

I hope that's not correct.





adam

Im pretty sure Nav means OE parts as im sure thats what ive always seen him use..

 

[KLP 92]

Im pretty sure Nav means OE parts as im sure thats what ive always seen him use..

Yes, thats what i meant, sorry for the confusion. My point was that most independant garages won't use parts that are from Mb but equivalent OE parts.

 

[Flash]

Whilst we are on the topic of customer cars being "abused" this is also quite common practise in a number of dealerships of various top brands. I have heard from technicians first hand that often customer cars are taken home by them over night/weekends (not for test driving to diagnose faults) BUT the technicians simply disable the odometer so that the miles are not clocked/recorded.

 

[GrahamC230K]

I reckon that you guys should give GF to post his side of the story, if he refuses then probably enough has been said.

He's always got the chance, he is well aware of this forum and has attended at least two forum GTGs from my memory.

There is a lot stacked against him here it would appear and comments such as these are not new, you will find similar threads dating back some time.