Okay everyone in the Jaguar Community I have a question so I had a slight leak somewhere in the cooling system and I brought it to this guy and after a thorough check he told me that I had a leak in my water pump he proceeded to take apart everything without getting the work approved yet by my warranty company and in the interim broke four hoses including the one coming from your tank at the top and he's charging me $80 for three hoses plus $40 for another and labor to put it in with a total of $600 now I think that's crazy because you don't need to diagnose a leak by taking everything apart you could probably see it from underneath does anyone have any kind of advice they could give me because I want to fight the charge because I think what he did was wrong and he broke all this stuff because he was touching everything and he probably ripped me off because he said there was a leak in the expansion tank and there is not a leak in the expansion tank anyway I just want some advice I don't have anyone to ask

 

I really hate it for you, truly I do, but this is not a Jaguar problem. This is a billing problem between you and your chosen mechanic. That being said, I'd probably try to appeal to his sense of accomplishment and ego, and ask him if he felt comfortable charging you that much for something he didn't get right (but in better words).

Also, for what it's worth, if you've ever tried to chase a coolant leak yourself, you'd know that it's not an exact science, so removing multiple hoses for access and/or line of sight doesn't seem that crazy to me. One would hope that your mechanic would be knowledgeable enough to at least narrow down the places for failure, but it's not always assured.

Best of luck.

 

I would say you may be facing a losing battle here. Firstly, you don't just 'break' coolant hoses by removing them, they break if they're brittle and broken down. With so many breakages, he'd either have to be cutting them off (in which case they didn't break, he destroyed them) or they must have all gone brittle and in which case regardless of who removed them, they would have needed replacing. The one argument you probably have, is that he didn't get approval for the work, however that depends, you say he didn't get approval from your warranty provider, so as your car is listed as a 2010 XFR, I'm assuming that is an external warranty provider and they're now saying that the hoses are not covered under their warranty? They probably would have said that regardless of whether he got their approval first or not, as I doubt he'd have been able to predict that four hoses would break before taking them apart. As Reaxions has said above, tracing a water leak isn't as easy as looking into the engine and going "Ah, Eureka there it is!" it's often a slow process of elimination and more often than not, involves removing 'bits' of the engine that are in the way and making you unable to see where the leak is coming from... moreover, those bits should ideally not break in your hand when removing them. It does seem unfair I grant you, you've taken your vehicle to a shop and asked them to diagnose a fault and the bill has come back much higher than you expected, but sad to say, these things happen. I'm assuming the $600 does at least also include fixing the original water leak?

 

Good example on why the average mechanic doesn't want to touch these fragile cars. The ones that do will overcharge just for having to deal with customers shocked by what a POS they drive.

If the car is finished with no more leaks and few new hoses installed that would need to be replaced anyway, pay the man and be on your way. The average repair upkeep is between $1-2k annual average, usually on the high side, and increasing with age. For a long list of reasons not popular to discuss on this *enthusiast* forum, it's just not the type of car to own if expecting complete control over the repair process. Yes even when doing the work yourself.