Are Car Repairs Guaranteed? Your Rights on Parts and Labour

Two different things are at work here, and confusing them is why people either give up too early or expect more than they will get.

Your statutory rights come from the Consumer Rights Act 2015. They apply to every garage in the UK, they cost nothing, and they cannot be signed away — no sign on the wall and no line in the terms removes them.

The garage’s own guarantee is a contractual promise on top of that. It varies enormously between businesses, it is usually more generous in practice than the law, and it is the thing you should ask about before the work starts rather than after.

A third thing gets confused with both. A manufacturer warranty, or a used-car warranty you bought, covers the vehicle rather than the repair work, and runs on entirely different terms — where you can have the car repaired deals with those.

What the law gives you, whatever the garage says

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. Where it has not been, the Act gives two remedies, and they come in a fixed order.

1. Repeat performance. You are entitled to have the work done again properly, at no cost to you. Not a partial refund, not a contribution — the job put right. This is the primary remedy and it is where most disputes should end.

2. Price reduction. Available where repeat performance is impossible, or where the garage has not done it within a reasonable time and without causing you significant inconvenience. A price reduction can run up to the whole amount, and any refund must come without a fee.

Two things surprise people. There is no right to reject a service the way you can reject faulty goods — you cannot simply hand the work back and demand your money. And beyond those two statutory remedies, ordinary damages may still be available at common law, which is the route that matters when bad work has caused consequential damage rather than just being bad.

Three further rights are worth knowing because they close the usual gaps: where no price was agreed, you owe a reasonable price; where no time was agreed, the work must be done in a reasonable time; and what the garage told you about the service — spoken or written — becomes part of the contract where you relied on it. What counts as reasonable depends on the job, and typical turnaround times are the starting point.

What about the parts themselves?

Parts fitted as part of a repair are goods supplied under a service contract, and they must be of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose.

The important practical point: your claim is against the garage that fitted the part, not the company that made it. You have no contract with the manufacturer. A garage saying “that’s a warranty matter for the part supplier, you’ll need to take it up with them” has misdescribed your position — it may well pursue the supplier itself, but that is its problem to solve, not yours to chase.

The garage’s own guarantee: what to ask

Most established garages guarantee their work, and the common shape is 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first. Some national chains offer longer on parts — two years or 24,000 miles is not unusual — and some independents match it. There is no legal minimum, so it is worth asking rather than assuming.

Five questions, ideally at the point of booking:

• Does it cover parts and labour? A parts-only guarantee leaves you paying the labour twice, which on a cambelt or a clutch replacement is most of the bill
• How long, and is there a mileage cap?
• What voids it?
• Does it cover consequential damage? The one below — read it before you skip it
• Is it transferable if you sell the car? Usually not, and it is worth knowing

Get the answers on the invoice. A guarantee you were told about verbally and cannot produce eleven months later is not much of a guarantee.

Consequential damage — the question that actually matters

This is the gap between a small problem and a very large one, and a cambelt is the clearest example on this site.

If a replacement belt fails early, the belt itself is a modest part. On most modern engines a snapped belt destroys valves and pistons, and the bill is a rebuilt or replaced engine — as the cambelt guide sets out. Whether the guarantee covers only the belt or the damage it caused is a completely different conversation from how long the guarantee runs.

Many written guarantees expressly exclude consequential loss. That exclusion does not touch your statutory position: if the work was not carried out with reasonable care and skill and that caused the damage, a common-law damages claim is not extinguished by a clause in a guarantee. But it is far easier to have that agreed in advance than argued afterwards, so ask.

The same logic applies wherever a small failure has a large downstream cost — a water pump fitted alongside a belt, a head gasket repair, a turbocharger oil feed.

What a guarantee will not cover

Reasonable exclusions exist, and knowing them saves a wasted argument.

• Wear items doing what they do. Brake pads, discs, tyres, wiper blades and a clutch friction plate are consumed by use. A guarantee covers a defect, not consumption — see how long brake pads last
• A different fault in the same area. Replacing an alternator does not guarantee the battery
• Damage from misuse, an accident, or continuing to drive on an obvious fault
• Work someone else has since done on the same system. Once another garage has been into it, proving whose work failed becomes very difficult, which is the practical reason to go back to the original garage first
• Parts you supplied yourself. A garage fitting your part will normally guarantee its labour and nothing else, and that is fair

Go back to the garage that did the work — first

This is the single most useful piece of process on the page, and getting it wrong is expensive.

The Act’s primary remedy is repeat performance: the garage that did the work is entitled to the opportunity to put it right. Take the car straight to a second garage, have it fixed, and then send the first the bill, and you may well have forfeited that remedy — you removed their chance to perform. It also destroys the evidence, because the faulty work no longer exists in the state it failed in.

So: go back, in writing, describing the symptom and the date of the original invoice. Ask for it to be put right under the guarantee or under the Act, and say which. Keep the reply.

If that fails, how to complain about a garage covers the escalation — the eight-week rule, what an ombudsman can and cannot do, and the small claims route. And if the job cost more than £100 and you paid on a credit card, you have a claim against the card provider running alongside all of it.

How long do you have?

Distinguish two clocks. The guarantee runs for whatever it says — commonly twelve months or 12,000 miles. Your statutory right to bring a claim runs much longer: generally six years in England and Wales and five in Scotland, measured from the breach.

That does not mean a fault appearing in year five will be blamed on a repair in year one. The further from the work, the harder it is to show the work caused it, and that burden sits with you. But an expired guarantee is not the end of the road, and garages occasionally imply that it is.

Keep the paperwork — it is the whole case

Quote, invoice, and any texts or emails. The invoice is what proves which part was fitted, on what date, at what mileage, by whom. Without it, a guarantee claim becomes your word against theirs, and asking for the old parts back is worth doing for the same reason.

We put the price in writing before we start and the work on an itemised invoice afterwards, and we will tell you what is guaranteed and for how long when you book rather than when something goes wrong. Ring us with the registration — seven days a week.