Servicing Stop.co.uk on Dragons Den

That is very true, I think people just seem to think that throwing money at a business is the answer yet there is so much you can do without breaking the bank. I think these guys will do well; at this time people are looking for ways to save money where ever they can. There are loads of people who drive used cars that a no longer in warranty who could do with the savings. Those who drive new cars that are still under warranty will obviously need to go to a main dealer or else they run the risk of making their warranty void.

It always amazes me how rubbishly optimized some of these Dragon Den sites are. I remember Peter Jones (who I know has had some internet based ventures) asked a diamond retailer where he ranked with his company name on Google (UK). He was barely on page one.

Nevertheless they’re on Dragon’s Den and SEO’ers are not, so they must be doing something right! :)

I have had first hand expiriance of Servicing Stop, just before Christmas my 1 year old S-Type Jaguar needed a service, after looking at my options I decided on Servicing Stop, sounded good, £249.00, collected, serviced, cleaned and returned, all warranty protected etc. Imagine my frustration when I did not get my car back for 3 months. They had franchised the work to a local garage who collected it and then subsiquently blew the engine up. The garage claim the turbo had blown, it went to Jaguar under warranty, Jaguar would not touch it under warranty as after many weeks it was decided the garage had over filled the oil, this exess oil was then forced up through the intercooler, through the turbo’s then the engine and back out both exausts, final diagnosis – Engine seized. Yeah fantastic.
after many weeks wrangling back and forth with the garage blaming Jaguar because they stated the engine was not seized when it went to them, Jaguar stating they had not even ran the car.
By this stage I was resigned to the only option left – legal action.
Fortunatly it did not come to that. Servicing Stop finally acepted responsibility and arranged for a new engine to be fitted. I did have the use of a hire car while all this was happening.
Now while I accept it was not Servicing Stop’s fault it was their responsibility and the fact that it took them 3 months to sort it out I feel was totaly unacceptable.
Having said that they did accept responsibility in the end and I ended up with a full refund, a brand new engine, compensation for the trouble and my next service free of charge.
Now you ask would I use them for the next service?
I would have to say yes, I understand the position Servicing Stop would have been in with their garage not accepting responsibility ( I wouldn’t want to admit that I had just blown up a very expensive engine) In the end it was sorted and I had a personal apology from Oliver and feel confidant when I call Servicing Stop next time and speak to Oliver to book my next service he will pesonaly make sure that my car has the best service in the world.

Patrick,

I’m interested in your view of the pages on this site for each manufacturer. They’re very similar for each manufacturer, just with models changed and the manufacturers name changed in the text.

I think it’s unique enough not to trigger a duplicate content filter but others disagree with me. What are your thoughts?

Service stop will be picking my car up next week. Will keep you posted on their service. £156 (10% Aug discount) for a Seat Ibiza is not bad my last service from my local Seat dealer cost £235. lets see how it goes.

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest from my experience with these guys. I had 3 different people call me in response to my web-submitted enquiry, each of them lost the details of the previous conversation and I only got my originally booked service slot after considerable chasing and complaining. I had a phone call telling me that there were 3 things that needed attention, to the tune of £725+VAT, did I want to go ahead? I said I’d get the car back and get some competitive quotes first. The first dealer I called said the first issue didn’t need work at all, the second was a case of “you can fix it but it’s not going to affect your ride or safety” while the third was “You need to fix that asap. It’ll cost £70+VAT inclusive of labour”. Now I’ve got the car back with no log book stamp, no report on what they had discovered and while they’d vacuumed the interior the car was decidedly unwashed. A shambles at best, at worst a great example of why garages have such a poor reputation.

i pick cars up for servicing stop. all i say is cut out the middle man

just have a look at car craft auto centre site its alot cheaper and thay offer the same service free collection and wash and vac. service stop also use them.
service stop dont even look at the car we give them a price and thay just put a cut on it

Had my BMW serviced by them, They picked the car up at the agreed time and and the guy who picked it up said it only going around the corner to car craft. They called at lunchtime to say it needed brakes and tyres done and they quoted me a price, I declined on this as I knew I could get it a LOT cheaper, and if you also look up carcraft reviews on google you would not want your car going there !! so they dropped the car back of to me. I asked they guy for sheet which showed what had been and he said it will be posted to me. Y

what car craft did it go to

to be fair ian car craft only do the work. servicing stop do all the rest like take pay ment , send reports off to customers and all that kind of stuff .

I have had the worst experience of a car service with servicingstop (still e-mailing them and telephoning them 4 weeks later). My complaint still hasn’t been dealt with and after the initial telephone call, to say my car was missing for 4 days (no-one told me where it was or how how long it would be gone) I have incurred a further charge of £90 in taxi fares while my car was missing. I WOULD ADVISE ANYONE UNHAPPY WITH THIS COMPANY TO CONTACT TRADING STANDARDS. Office of fair trading and trading standards have been great!

james where do you live

Worst service I’ve error received from a car garage, wish I’d stuck to main dealer and that’s saying something!
Servicing stop give you a quote of the price when you book your service, don’t be fooled, read what it actually includes, and if you don’t know what your car’s servicing schedule is then you could get screwed.
Servicing stop’s “Full Service” is not specific to your car, its basically Oil & Filter.

My dealer quoted £260 for a complete 27k Service for my car.
Servicing stop quoted £165 for a “Full Service”
Great deal right? oh how wrong I was.

About lunch time I received a call from them saying the Garage said for my particular car it needs a gearbox oil change and a coolant flush, at an extra cost of £100! Making my new service £265, no longer a £100 saving it’s actually going to cost me £5 more than my dealer.

I provided servicing stop them with all the details of my car when I made my booking, why could they not have told me this then?

Servicing Stop are rubbish! The bill came to £850, as they found a number of things wrong with the car (which may have been true) but I’m not sure it was a saving on costs. But the worse thing was the service. The car was returned at 8pm not the original 4 to 6pm that we were told. They then revised the time to 6pm and then again 6.30pm with it finally arriving at 8pm and them saying there was traffic (15 minute journey!)
We tried contacting Servicing Stop to complain and b asically they don’t give a toss as they never responded back. The garage told us they had received our complaint but didn’t give a monkeys, just wanted their dosh.
Definitely wouldn’t recommend it…. cut out the middle man and go to a trusted independent local garage!

I also had a bad experience of servcing stop. There was no consistency with who I spoke to. The people on the end of the phone changed their story a few times as what was wrong with my car, trying to charge me for things that were supposed to be part of the servcie. They were also rude and laughed down the phone at me when I was unsure about something.

I chose to not get anything done by them and took my car to a recommended local dealer who said half of the things servicing stop reccommended me to have done didn’t even need doing and they were charging me double what my local garage charged for tyres and a new cam belt.

Please do not use this company, they are a sham! Support local business instead. I don’t know what Deborah Meaden was thinking backing them!

as an indepenent garage i relish your comments on servicing stop (except the positive ones)I have recently read the criterea for joining them as an authorised repairer and can only say that I am amazed that any garage has been desperate enough to join up,it seems that s/s are only interested in profit gained by screwing both the garage and the customer, by my calulations they will make over 100 pounds for a full service on an average family car,for a few minutes admin,the garage accepts all the liabilities and is not supported in any other way by s/s my advice to any potential victims is to contact local garages that are part of the good garage scheme,I am a member of this as well as another large organisation, and have been very impressed with their aproach to the garage and the customers needs.I also would like to point out that some of the comments made supporting servicing stop seem somewhat suspicious, it would not be unexpected to assume that certain people have a vested interest in trying to salvage this companys reputation.I feel that these type of companies do not deserve to succeed because they are purely profit motivated,If they provided a fairer deal to the garage and customer,invested in training & support for the garages then maybe my views would be different,as it is the only way the garage can profit is to spend as little time on your car as possible.to finish on a more personal note I am not a fan of dragons den nor can assume to know much about it,but I will say that I find the dragons are are greedy egomaniacs that are not happy with amassing huge fortunes they also require fame.
dont be taken in by these charlatans

I recently did a FULL service on my Range Rover V8, took me half a day, changed oils/ filters cleaned spark plugs and set gaps, wheels off checked brake wear and cleaned sensors, carried out all the items on S/S checklist pdf from their website and cross referred to RR servicing manual.
Cost me about £50, a few grazed knuckles and used my own tools. I enjoyed every moment of it.
Got the car back on the road same day!

@cass do you have a citation to back your comment?

Either way, this company is still a waste of time, with or without Deborah Meaden.

I have just had my first experience of Servicestop and after reading some of the reviews I was really worried that I had made a really bad choice. I have to say I have been delighted with my experience, no problems. My car was picked up at 9.30am and returned beautifully clean, serviced and MOT’d by 3.15pm. No hazzles whatsoever. My advice is give it a go and don’t be put off by the bad reviews – not all garages are the same!

We booked a service through Serving Stop because we were persuaded that it was a high quality, reasonably priced service with solid backing. We have a Smart car and usually have it serviced at Mercedes. The car was having some trouble with the engine so we asked Serving Stop if they could get the battery/ engine looked at at the same time. They said no problem.

The car was collected and taken to a local garage we were later phoned and told the car needed a new battery and a number of other items adding up, with the service, to a cool £920. This more than we wanted to pay but we wanted the car on the road and safe. It was returned later that day and the car still has problems with the engine .. the battery wasn’t the problem and when we asked about it they said that they had checked it, it was charging but they had repalced it because we had asked them to. This wasn’t accurate we had no redress, they would not even come a look at the car again.

To top it all we had to take the car to Mercedes anyway. We found out that Mercedes charge £70 for a new tyre, fitted, balanced and including VAT. Servicing Stop chargeg £75 for the tyre, plus balancing, plus VAT.

The whole set up is and was a rip off and the after sales service was awful and rude. They charged us for items we did not need. WE WILL NOT BE USING SERVICING STOP AGAIN.

In reply to Boomer comment, please do not compare a Good Garage Scheme member to those of SS, we are an independent garage and have been trading for 17 years we have also used Forte products within our servicing for 17 years and have only been a member of GGS for 1 year. Yes the GGS is run by Forte but you have been mis-informed regarding buying the products. There is no minimum qty and we do not spend BIG money with forte. As i said earlier we have always used forte products in our servicing,any full service should have an engine flush and have a conditioner added as standard. If you want to pay £99 for a ‘service ‘ as some garages advertise you only pay for oil and filter which is not a full service as is recommended by the manufacturer. The reason we use forte (there are alternative products on the market) is because it is the best and we always provide the best quality products to our customers. If anyone has a problem with a GGS member then they can complain directly to the GGS who investigate. The GGS is excellent for people who are wary of the after sales motor industry and gives them an excellent first point of call. Each garage has feedback which can be viewed by potential customers before they decide who to use. We always find word of mouth is the best recommendation.

A BIG NO NO ! My first experience with this company is terrible. In regards with my MOT, I was told to change brake pads, wipers and a few more things totalling the bill to around 700 quids. I knew the brakes were perfectly fine so decided not to go for MOT with them and lose the MOT fee instead. Got MOT done by BOSCH garage in my area, and the job was done in 150 quids, not to mention that most of the work mentioned by SS was not requied at first place.

These guys are a big blot in the name of trust and to top it up more, the customer services is appauling. Disgusting company, would never go back and would preach everybody not to even pass by them, not to even think of it.

I've been surfing the net – thinking about trying an online car service for may Audi A3. It is just out of warranty but I would like a full manufacturer's service. I can only find two sites offering this
NSN – http://www.nsn.co.uk
and
Blackcircles – http://www.Blackcircles.com/servicing
The rest seem to be offering menu based "full service"

Has anybody tried either of these services?

My apologies if its not allowed to leave links to other websites but I thought I would share this one as its been very helpful to me http://www.findmeagarage.co.uk

We are on Servicing Stop's list of garages and we are very proud of the standard of work that we carry out and we believe that we have a brilliant customer relations

Service Stop I'm afraid are pretty useless at organising anything,they constantly ring us when we have a Service Stop job in to try and say to the customer that they need a "brake fluid flush" or "antifreeze change" even better an "engine flush" when quite clearly the mileage/age of the car we are working on does not warrant this "extra" work,we obviously decline these offers stating that the vehicle does not need these items.

I also do not think that they are cheap,so far I have been paid more from Servicing Stop for a service than I would have charged the customer for the same service(we don't collect or wash the car,don't believe it's free,we get paid £25 + vat to wash n vac and collect/deliver plus £4.50 + vat for fluid top -ups???????).

I had my car serviced with servicingstop.co.uk just the other week. I was happy with the cost of the service, it seemed reasonable compared with the main dealer but my car needed some additional work done.

The man on the phone who called was very very pushing and I actually had to tell him to shut up to get a word in edgeways. After I got my car back I called the main dealer for a quote on the work that had been done, it appears that servicingstop.co.uk ripped me off for £143.

I would not trust them in the future and would definitely not tell anyone to use them.

I have been trying to speak to someone at servicingstop.co.uk but the bosses are permenantly “in a meeting”

My regularly-serviced Toyota Rav4 was taken to them by ServicingStop. It’s a 1996 model but with only 33K miles and it was SORN for 2 year after doing only 300 miles since its last no problem MOT. I was therefore somewhat surprised to receive a “bad news” call telling me that the car had failed due to a worn tyre, headlight adjustment, hand brake adjustment and… a “leaking brake servo”. The latter was quoted at over £800 with labour and there was a long list of “additional work advised” including timing belt, water pump, spark plugs, all oil & fluid changes adding up to a total of over £1900 EXCLUDING the £250 charged for a full service and MOT!!

I asked for the car to be returned and took it to a reputable local garage who did the MOT, serviced the brakes, changed the type, adjusted the headlamps, topped up or changed fluids/oils depending on condition for £525 all inclusive. Before I had the work done, I did the brake servo test and asked them to also check beforehand and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I don’t know if it’s incompetence or dishonesty but it was a complete waste of time and money. I am now in contact with ServicingStop customer care who are explaining that MOT tests can be “interpreted differently depending on the garage” and “given the age and mileage of the car, manufacturer servicing recommendations, etc” but even there the timing belt/water pump replacement (quoted at over £300+VAT) is given for 60k miles minimum. A previous ServicingStop representative had assured that an error of that magnitude (i.e. failing MOT on a major part that was ok) “would be dealt with very seriously” but they are not falling over each other to get back to me so far… we shall see.

I liked the concept of ServicingStop but their use of 3rd party garages is bound to give mixed results. I did my homework but bottom line is that you are better off selecting a reputable garage in person.

what car craft did it go to?

Try http://www.findmeagarage.co.uk for reviews (good and bad ones) on garages. Make your own mind up!!

I get these updates because I posted on here a while back – I really don’t get all the negativity (and no, I don’t work there)!!?! I wonder if this is the forum for people who had bad experiences!! :) I regurarly write letters to companies when I have bad servcie, but I also make a point of writing good ones when I have good service. Maybe some of you guys have just had the misfortune to have gone to a bad garage on their list…?
I started using Servicing Stop a couple of years ago, and now I always use them…. Like, hello? I totally don’t have the time to faff around calling for quotes and trying out a new garage and taking time off work to drop my car in!
I’ve had so many bad experiences with garages, now I’ve found one that’s good, I’m not going anywhere. They do the job, do it well, and they’re not overly expensive (for me, anyway)! Maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve only had good service from them, and now my dad uses them too :) Just wanted to say…….

Err Like Hello Rob, yes I’m aware they’re not a garage, but I’ve never had to speak to the garage directly, only them, and they’re quite nice. :) And if it does cost a little more to go through someone like them (from previous experience with garages, I’m not sure it does actually…?), then so be it – it saves me the hassle of organising it…..