Rogue mechanic - have i been conned?

hello, new member here signed up because I am a bit sceptical about the amount a local mechanic has charge my father for a repair.

my father has a 2004 td6 range rover. recently i stumbled upon a repair bill and thought the mechanic may have taken advantage of my father. he has had problems with the injectors on his range rover for sometime now and still does even though the mechanic has charge him over £1400 without even replacing the injectors. worse thing is that the mechanic gave the car back to my father claiming to have fixed it!!!

repair bill is as follow -

diagnostic fee - £100

parts total - £760
which consisted of:
alternator drive belt
air con belt
vacuum pipes
fuel filter
radiator
osf door control module
door lock catch
injector pipes

labour - £550

strange thing is that he diagnosed the above but failed to notice that the car wasn't driving correctly and the injection fuel system error message light was appearing.

I have pulled him up on this and he claimed that he was not told to address this issue by my father! furthermore he failed to provide invoices for his work at the time, it was only after my father broke down in the car a few days after this chap returned the car that I asked my father what had the mechanic done and how much he had charged. alarmed by the amount and also by the way the car was driving I gave him a call and he reluctantly provided some invoices claiming that all parts used were genuine land rover.

I gave him a piece of my mind and said I would be in touch after I investigated his charged to see if they were reasonable.#

what do you guys make of this?

apologies for the long first post. your help is much appreciated.# thanks!

Parts probably not far of if genuine parts used and there are invoices to back them up. Labour sounds strong but if its 10 hours and £55 an hour there it is.

I suppose a rad change might take 2 hours? Belts another hour, seems strong to have charged a diagnostic fee on top of the labour. The door control module may have needed coding that can take time, he might even have outsourced that back to land rover who would have charged a fortune for it.

I suppose the only way to know is to phone another specialist with the list of work done and ask them for a quote.

he claims to have used genuine land rover parts ordered from land rover however when i asked him to provide me the invoice for these parts he could not. I cant be certain that he even used all new parts as the person that recommended this guy has told me that he used to buy parts off ebay.

this guy is no specialist thats for sure and it looks like my dad has paid specialist prices. will give a garage a call tomorrow and find out what they would charge.

Well in theory you should be able to get land rover to confirm the ordering of the parts, they won't tell you the cost of course but if they confirm they shipped the parts to him at least you know in theory they were new bits going on there. I would expect a radiator to be at least £400 for a genuine unit. Probably more.

yes, I will be asking the mechanic to produce something from land rover to prove he used them to source the parts.

my father has informed me that he supplied the radiator, this mechanic has included this as a part on his invoice!!!

So you suspect injector faults?

Put your location down (a rough area - like mine) there maybe a member close with diagnostics who can plug in and check for faults codes for you.

thanks for the offer! ive decided to cut our losses with the car, over the years my dad has thrown a lot of money at it (had it 5 years now). in fact my dad has been driving range rovers for the past 12 odd years! decided to try out the landcruiser now.

I am looking to get some money back off this mechanic. I dont mind paying a fair price for work done but I think this guy has just taken advantage.

If you ask Land Rover they will tell you the "book" times for each job. That's how long it should take and what the quote is based on. A reasonable independent will probably be around £50 / hour.