Habi check - can I help?

[ColinM50]

Just booked my motorhome in for it's annual habitation check and for the replacement of our bed motor and asked the dealer if I can help. He says due to insurance limitations, I'm not allowed in the workshop. Does that seem reasonable to you or is it protectionism to stop me seeing what they do (or don't do for the money)?

 

My local car garage lets me watch/help when I have the car MoT'd so a bit put out that I can't see what they do

[spospe]

I think that they are being quite reasonable in restricting access and not allowing you to 'help'. with the habitation service.

 

It is a mandatory part of the MOT process that the testers have to provide a viewing area so that you can see what is going on, but I am most surprised that any testing station would allow you to 'help' to any degree at all. The test is supposed to be an independent examination of the vehicle, so having the owner 'helping' must surely compromise the impartiality of the process.

 

Or have I misunderstood what you have written?

[Fred Duck]

Quite a normal situation. Your MH man will have a clause in his business insurance policy saying that only his employees are covered by that insurance and, specifically, customers wandering round his workshop are not covered. In the event of an accident, therefore, he would have no insurance cover for you if you were to be in the workshop 'helping'. Your MOT man will have a similar clause but he obviously chooses to ignore it in your case. That's a risk he's taking; on his own head be it.

 

FD

[BruceM]

I’ve never had a third party hab check carried out, I do my own, however I’d have expected you to be provided with a list of everything that was checked as we all do when we have a vehicle service. If you don’t get a list then I suggest you ask for one otherwise how do you know what you’re paying for and how do they know what they should be doing?

[Brock]

The dealer is right to disallow access to the work areas for health & safety/insurance purposes. They can be dangerous areas. I never allowed customer to come in to our office without a risk assessment and appointing someone responsible to chaperone. The risk of you being injured, stealing equipment or data is less than minimal although a variation of the 'cash for scam' can never be ruled out nowadays. Then there is the risk of the dealer being blamed for something failing that you checked or fitted.

 

Dealers should give you a list of items checked. If it is accredited as an Approved Workshop it must give you one.

 

I'd be more put out that your garage has a cavalier approach to health & safety!

[aandncaravan]

There are all sorts of 'formal' issues that can be thrown into the mix if you want to stop people seeing how you work and what you do for the customers money. However, we made the assumption that the customers had basic common sense and choose to treat them with respect, therefore granted access to the workshop.

We welcomed them watching us work, we had nothing to hide.

 

We had always encouraged customers to work with us, even doing some of the work themselves to reduce the size of the bill.

I can't tell you how often in more recent times I have been grateful that the customer lifted their own Batteries into place or helped me remove a front seat.

 

As a result we met some lovely people.

 

We even gave technical advice on how the customer could rectify issues themselves

 

 

 

But then again I am now penny less, so maybe that wasn't the ideal business model, but it was fun.

 

 

 

 

[Will86]

That's interesting ... and how I always worked, I would be called into a company to fix a problem and the first thing I did was to explain how and why with nothing hidden. Many couldn't understand why but it ensured I was always occupied ... and money ... is only a selection of numbers !