Advice Please For On-going Nightmare

I would be speaking to a solicitor now. Well-intended advice on a forum (including mine) is not going to resolve this. Do you have the legal cover generally bundled with your insurance? This is what it's for. If not then you might consider trying to enlist a specialist solicitor, with whom the initial consultation is sometimes free; s/he could then write to them advising that your legal fees will be added to the costs which you are seeking.

 

Interesting view. My experience of bundled motor legal cover is that it can help you cover legal costs if you’re in an accident. It can be useful where your insurance won’t pay out, as it might give you a chance to take the other driver to court for compensation. But all these situations are usually subject to a "chance of winning" calculation: if you have a 50:50 chance of winning or less, you won't be covered. I've never seen one which will cover you regarding a dispute over servicing, but I'd be very happy to hear of one which does - I'll be changing my insurance!
Privately employing a solicitor is usually fiendishly expensive and can take months to get anywhere as they're not renowned for their efficiency, or even their expertise. It would probably be cheaper and quicker by far to pay for the repairs yourself.

 

It all depends on the policy. But many cover disputes with garages ('It may also provide cover for legal costs if you have a dispute with a garage over repairs or servicing of your vehicle.') It's worth checking.

Privately employing a solicitor won't cost anything if they take it on under Conditional Fee Agreement, under which of course they are incentivised to get a result.

 

Alas I fear you will have no luck and end up with a large bill or a bike to sell for parts. If they overfilled, they will argue it wouldn't have taken 5 trips to show its issue. Having potentially overfilled a triumph that seized and blew its bottom end, after 3 laps of Portimao, I'd wonder why it took so long.

Their treatment though s they aren't interested either way. Get the bike out, put somewhere you trust for an assessment and decide.

Good luck

 

Possible, I guess, but I think you're going to find it an uphill struggle to find a solicitor willing to take such a case on a CFA. They are usually very risk-averse and, in this guy's case, it's 50:50 at best, in my opinion. If costs aren't awarded in any settlement, who has to pay the solicitor's fee? And if the decision goes the other way and the garage claims costs including the hiring of an independent engineer's report, who pays that? Genuinely interested.

Can you quote any insurance companies that include disputes with garages in their legal cover. Are there any that guarantee to take on a 50:50 case, or worse? This is anither genuine question because, as I said before, I'll be changing my insurance company. One which is prepared to take on such risk for around £30 a year is worth using.

 

If you do end up taking it on the chin and youre remotely handy...remove the engine yourself....youll save a shit load on labour...

 

Get it out of there, don't let them touch it and don't throw good money after bad.
I think you're going to have a hard time proving fault but you'll never prove it if these muppets open your engine up. Contacting a specialist bike orientated solicitor for an initial chat would be good advice. If they won't take it on a no win no fee basis then you're probably not going to win.
But......they're not going to take it on at all until you get it stripped and the fault identified.
Good luck fella.
Upt.

 

You said 'bundled' higher up but I avoid those. Just decline the option and buy a freestanding one such as DriverGuardian or the well regarded RAC one:

https://www.rac.co.uk/insurance/legal-expenses-insurance

It includes:

'Disputes with garages
If you’re facing a dispute with a garage, after buying or selling the vehicle, or have concerns about poor servicing or repair work, the RAC’s policy will provide the help you need and cover legal costs if you need a solicitor.'

 

Er, sorry, it was you who first used the word "bundled" in post #21

"Do you have the legal cover generally bundled with your insurance? This is what it's for."

According to you, "This is what it's for"

Just sayin'

But that looks like a good value policy

 

Again, this is the great thing about the small claims court, no solicitors, fixed low cost, balance of probabilities not court style beyond reasonable doubt. Worse case is you lose a few quid. They cannot recover costs from you.

 

However, looking at their terms and conditions, you're not insured for a 50:50 (or less). Just like every other policy. But £15 is good value

"You’re covered if you enter into an agreement during the policy period and within the UK, to buy, sell or hire a motor vehicle, or have it serviced or repaired and wish to claim compensation for breach of that agreement. We will: • Provide you with help and advice (under the Telephone Legal Helpline, Section E). You must call our helpline straight away. We won’t be able to cover legal costs that haven’t been agreed by us first. • Put you in touch with our legal representative, who will assess your case. • Pay for legal costs, up to a maximum of £10,000 per claim. Our legal representative must first, in their reasonable opinion, agree your claim has a 51% or greater chance of succeeding."

 

Exactly right

 

Ah yes fair enough.

I think some home insurance policies come with legal advice / expenses cover, so that might also be worth checking. Even if they won't simply take the case on - and being insurance companies they can be relied on to find a reason not to ... - you might get some free legal advice re best moves at this stage, forms of wording etc.

 

Although now rusty on this, i'm thinking similar to above as this is a typical "after the fact" occurrence of damage and therefore blame. Taking the bike back to them for them to work on it now has almost weakened your case if you were thinking of any redress from them from the start. I don't know what you discussed with the Hastings Company/how you left it with them upon returning the bike, but unless they clearly accepted full or part responsibility at the time of collecting the bike, then, although I'm being cynical, I doubt if they will now. Any cases I've been involved with, you would more likely take the engine to an agreed, renowned expert to trying to determine what was wrong first of all*, and then after this you would be relying on the evidence of renowned experts to volunteer what most likely happened. Unless the Hastings company volunteers to do this as a goodwill gesture, I think that this could turn out to be just one of those unfortunate things sadly, as extremely difficult to prove one way or the other now.

* if it's thought to be the most likely cause, then even thoroughly draining and measuring the oil quantity could be extremely relevant here.

 

I’ve been reading this thread without commenting, but feel it’s time to chip in with possibly what you don’t want to hear.

Personally I don’t think you are going to get anywhere recovering any costs from the original repairer, or even getting them to repair it to a standard you’ll be comfortable with.

So your decision is how long you want to be without your bike whilst you continue to try and recover the situation with as little or no cost to you.

You can carry on as you are, or recover the bike and sort it out though other means whilst doing what you are capable of to reduce the impact financially.
Sometimes admitting defeat is better for the soul and your wellbeing than continuing with the stress of doing what you, and we, know is theoretically the ‘Right’ thing to do.

If it was me I’d be buying a used engine from a reputable dismantler and fitting it myself.
If you are not confident in your ability to do that you can at least strip the bike as much as possible before delivering it to a repairer with a known reputation.

Or even recover it, sell it on as is and put what you get for it towards the cost of an exciting new(to you) bike.
.

 

Like @Nasher Ive held back on commenting but he makes some very valid points. Everyone is talking about legal action but you’ll need to demonstrate 2 things.

1. the precise cause of the failure
2. the failure was due to their negligence.

Thats a direct consequence of them being negligent, not bad luck or bad timing because whatever occurred happened 200 miles/5 trips after it was serviced.

How much oil did they bill you for on the invoice? That’s what they’ll say is the amount they put in.

I had an 1199 Panigale for service once, took 5.5ltrs of oil out of it (he’d been topping it up whilst it was on the side stand). He’d probably done about 4000km with it like that. The only issues were a very oily airbox (due to the crankcase breather venting into there) and a very smoky exhaust (due to the oily atmosphere in the airbox) and very sooty plugs.

You’re going to have to demonstrate too much oil has caused a big end shell to disintegrate if indeed that is the prognosis once someone gets in there.

Its not what you want to hear I’m sure, its a shit situation, but at the end of the day it may be a case of correlation not causation and you need to be prepared for that.

 

I hope it works out for you.

Did they commit to a timeframe?

 

If this goes through as you've described then i think you've come out of it very well. When the cause is a bit of a grey area then the most frequent resolutions often involve an approximate 50/50 cost split. Full marks to "the Hasting guys".

 

What a surprisingly happy ending! Great news.