Mechanic nightmare

I remember when I first moved to France that mechanics had a pretty bad reputation for being slow. Indeed, one of my friends had terrible problems with her Volkswagen bus: they changed all sorts of things at two different mechanics but it still ran slowly. When she got it back to England, her mechanic saw straight away that the choke cable was stuck on. She had gone through so much fuel and had paid so much money to have things fixed that weren’t broken!

Thankfully, I found a great mechanic just outside of Annecy (Troc Auto at Grand Epagny if you need one and you’re nearby), and for years, my car and I have been looked after well. That all changed when my fuel pump stopped working on my old Golf. Unable to drive it more than twenty metres before it would just stop, I asked a mechanic just up the road to fix it. That was on a Monday morning just over two weeks ago and my car still isn’t fixed. Somehow, it took him until the following Thursday (eleven days later) to sprout some story about how his mechanic was going on holiday so he didn’t think he’d have time to fix it. It took him ELEVEN DAYS to tell me he didn’t have time! I called almost every day and he kept saying he still didn’t know when the part could be delivered and that he’d call me the next day. He didn’t call once.

I limped my car to a different local mechanic where it’s been ever since. They tell me they’ve replaced the fuel pump, but now they’re waiting on the related burnt-out fuse. We can only be grateful these mechanics aren’t paramedics!