A little tale to make you suck your gums! I bought a Tow Bar from that well known auction site, a brand new one , german made, to fit my Mercedes, I had every intention to fit it myself, but reading the instructions to remove the rear Bumper and Exhaust, and, suffering from a chest infection, I decided to use the services of a “Specialist” from a National Towbar fitting Company, and duly booked it in for a Home fitting, The person doing the booking was very thorough, and noted the year , make and model of the car and towbar, with a quted price of £75.00 plus Vat, the fitter would arrive at 9.30 am , and if early or late would ring.
At 8.30 after a banging on the door, I opened it to a young chap with a fag in his mouth, and when I asked why he had not rung as planned, he shrugged, and said he did not know my number, I asked him if he had experience of fitting this particular towbar to this type of car, and he said he had fitted “Hundreds” I told him that I intended to fit it myself, until I read the instructions regarding the bumper and exhaust and then drilling a 50mm hole in the floor to take a tubular projection, he laughed, and said that it was not correct, and there was no need to do any of those things, and he could do it in 30 mins, Hour max.!.
After half an hour, I went out and saw that he was struggling to get the Bumper off! he didnt have a ratchet spanner to undo one particular bolt, so I got my tool box out, the bolt had nothing to do with the Bumper! I helped him to remove it in case he did any more damage, ten mins later he was unbolting the Exhaust and trying to drag out the heat shield! by now I had lost all confidence in my “Professional Fitter” and decided to keep a close watch on his progress, sure enough after ten mins came the sound of drilling, he was using a cone drill not big enough to make a 50 mm hole, I asked him why, he did not follow the instructions in the first place, he said he had never fitted this type of towbar to this type of car! and he did not have a hole saw! I did, but had to make a “Packer” for the pilot drill, because this idiot had already drilled a hole too large for it!. as you can imagine I stood over him when he did the wirering, I told him that my previous car was a Range Rover, and I had fitted the tow bar, he told me that new Range Rovers had a Tow Bar frame “Built in” and the owner just had to buy a detachable tow ball for £500.00 he went to fit one to a new Range Rover, where the owner had “Lots of money” but he found in the boot a new tow ball from Land Rover in its compartment, so he pocketed that, fitted a £150.00 one that he had bought, charged the owner £500.00 and sold his Land rover towball on Ebay for £500.00! he seemed very proud of himself, I was appalled .
After he left I found that he had lost half of the trim screws and the bumper is half an inch away from the body, glad to have him off the premises, Merry Christmas!!
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