I am Jon Mitchell, owner of JMG Porsche. I am also the senior Porsche technician here with over 30 years experience and one of the technical advisor team of the official Porsche club of great Britain and the independent Porsche enthusiasts club.
I was made aware of your complaint here on 911UK earlier in the year, as although I have been a member of this forum for many years, the admins will I am sure confirm, I had not logged in for many years.
This is mainly because in my capacity with the two Porsche clubs, any spare time I had to keep an eye on forums, had to be focussed on those two Porsche clubs to an extent.
However with the advent of social media and the forums becoming less busy, I now have more time to join in on other forums like this one.
During the summer, having had my attention drawn to a couple of unhappy members, I had extensive chats with Phill997 here at 911UK as well as communicating with Sundeep.
Of the two or three unhappy posts about JMG I can find over a time period of many years, this one is one of those, so although I apologise that it is rather late, I thought it is better late than never.
With this particular complaint by Den Boy, I have managed to identify the customer and the event.
We are not perfect, but we try to be wherever we can.
However with Den Boy's report of events, it would seem like we have tried to sell him a water pump replacement which was somehow fraudulent.
The actual events were that we inspected Den Boy's car as part of a service and free new customer inspection.
During this process we found 21 points of advisory with the car, some of which were urgent, but mostly they were advisories of things to deal with in the future.
Three of the points were "Coolant level very low - Rectified in service top up", one was "bulging coolant hose - requires replacement" and "Leaking waterpump - Requires replacement"
Following the visit by Den Boy, he emailed us to request that we alter the advisories on the invoice, as the car dealer he bought the car from had rectified the coolant hose, but had said that the waterpump was fine.
Over the years, we have dealt with the good, bad and ugly of car dealers, and in particular we have seen every trick and potion they will use to avoid having to repair a car.
In this case we were told by Den Boy that the car dealer had replaced the hose and said the waterpump was fine. However, we would not be able to tell if the car dealer had in fact replaced the coolant hose and used an additive to stop the waterpump was leaking.
It is not always as cut and dry as this, so I asked the technician at the time, if he was 100% sure the waterpump was leaking, and he assured me that the waterpump wash indeed leaking and also had dried coolant in a trail from the nose shaft of the waterpump going down the body of the waterpump.
Den Boy was told at the time that for security reasons, when an invoice is raised, with advisories, once the invoice is paid, it is locked from modification.
Which is indeed true, an administrator at JMG needs to log in to alter an invoice, it can not be performed by a technician.
However, beyond this there is an ethical point, especially relating to altering advisories.
We have several used car dealers who use us, and want us to service and stamp the service books of their cars. These dealers often want us to re-word or omit details from invoices, because they know that they would rather have an invoice for the service which gives the car a clean bill of health. We always refuse these requests, and on several occasions, when a new owner of one of these cars has then run into problems, and come complaining to us, we have been able to demonstrate that the car dealer knew of these advisories.
It does not win us friends with car dealers, but it protects the Porsche enthusiast community, where a service stamp or service invoice with advisories is actually worth something, which is something we feel strongly about.
Del Boy's complaint, as sent to us by email at the time, was NOT that we had tried to sell him a waterpump that he did not need.
But instead, when his warranty from the car dealer ended, he intended to buy another warranty on the car, for which he was worried that the previous service having an advisory of the waterpump was leaking, would classify any future claim on the waterpump as invalid, as a previously existing fault.
But, a previously existing fault it certainly was, which is why we would not alter the service advisories.
If the car dealer in question was so sure that there was nothing wrong with the waterpump, surely he could have personally underwritten the waterpump for an extra year, which would have satisfied both Den Boy, but also would not have conned another warranty company into potentially paying for it if it had failed within the year.
It might not mean much to some people, but I strongly believe in ethics, being transparent and being honest.
Yes, if we had altered the service invoice and deleted our comments about the waterpump, Den Boy would have been able to sign up for an aftermarket warranty, which may have ended up paying for his waterpump.
But at the end of the day, the amount that warranty companies charge for their product is based on the amount they have to pay in claims.. Den Boy getting a break with the waterpump would not just cost a big company or
Insurance underwriter a sum of money, it would have cost everyone who pays for a warranty everywhere.
As Martin Luther King once said, "Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere"...
But worse than this, if Den Boy chose to sell the car after we updated his invoice, and then the next person suffered a waterpump failure, when/if the dealer had used an additive to temporarily fix the leak, then would that be fair?
Please everyone, feel free to discuss this here, as I think JMG have taken the correct attitude, which needs to be maintained for our service stamp and invoices/advisories to be worth anything.
All the best