For nearly 10 years I took my car, my wife's car and encouraged my kids to use the Halfords Garage facilities and I found that they always did a good job and were reasonably priced. I got to know the reception staff and the manager and found it easy to talk to them about problems on the various cars.
When I last took my son's car to the AA Service Centre for a Service and MOT it needed some work doing for the MOT, which I agreed to, and one of the points was headlamp beam adjustment. They charged me for this when on other occasions Halfords had not.
I was also advised that other work would need to be done on the car and I asked them to prepare a quote for me. When I turned up to collect the car the quote was not ready. As it was nearly closing time I said that I would call back the next day for the quote. Due to circumstances I called in two days later and the quote still had not been done. I was promised a call when it was ready and I am still waiting.
A month or so later I made an appointment with them to have a look at my heater as the fan had been noisy, but had now stopped working, and asked then to also check out the heat distribution as the control knob just spun around with no effect. I said to the young guy at the reception, when I dropped it off at 9-00 am, that I suspected that (a) the bearing had gone on the fan motor (noisy), the speed resistors had burnt out (fan now not working) and the distribution assembly probably needed changing.
As I had not heard anything by 5-30 pm I gave them a call and after hearing a lot of muttering in the back ground, such as yes it is out there on the front, I was told that I could come and collect it. When I arrived my car was in exactly the same position as I had left it. Inside I was advised by the Manager, a new guy who had, I think, only been there a few months, that the mechanic who had dealt with it had gone home and if the fan was noisy then it probably did need a new motor, and yes the resistors do burn out and they would need to be replaced. Nothing was said about the air distribution control. When I asked about how much it would cost he stated that they would need to speak to the Main Dealer to get part prices. He would call me the next day. Guess who is still waiting for a call? Had they really looked at the car?
On the occasions I was lurking around the reception desk waiting my turn, one of the topics of conversation always appeared to be about contract work, had it been booked in, had it been finished, so it could be that that sort of work took priority. With a complete loss of Customer confidence I've not been back since.
I was not too worried when the AA took over this Halfords Servicing work as I thought that here was a company always fighting for the motorists rights, always stating how motorist were being ripped off by the Government and cowboy garages and I thought that I would still be getting a good deal from them, however from invoices I noticed that they were charging nearly £60 per hour labour rate, which I believe is very close to main dealer rate. Their prices for normal services had increased, in a 12 month period, in the region of 25%
Looking back it occured to me how the original Manager and the Reception staff had all disappeared quite quickly so maybe it was a case that they were giving (too) good Customer service. Some of the same mechanics are still there but I suppose that they just do the job as normal.