Gary's Car Radio

Recently, my significant other and myself made the decision to get a new car stereo put in. We had also been thinking of replacing the alarm in the car with an immobiliser, and so Ms Dikkii traipsed off to Gary's Car Radio in Heidelberg to get the job done.

What a disaster that was...

Dear "Gary",

This is a complaint. Not your usual, "We're not happy," complaint.

Oh no. This is a, "We're screaming blue murder and you're damn lucky we're not violent," style complaint.

A couple of months ago, my wife and I made the decision to get our car alarm replaced with an immobiliser.

After initial discussions with the guy in your Heidelberg shop, we thought that you'd provided a favourable quote. My wife asked about car stereos - because we were looking at a new one - and your guy in the shop - who's name is also Gary - provided us with a favourable quote for the whole thing.

The quote provided to us included a new stereo head unit and speakers. Gary mentioned to my wife that this would be for a Eurovox or Clarion head unit, and we felt happy with that.

Our car was booked in for the job, and it came back with a shiny new stereo, speakers and an immobiliser.

This was where it all started going wrong.

First of all, the frame around the old Kenwood head unit had been cracked during removal, making it impossible to be used again.

Secondly, the new head unit was of the brand AXIS and was different to the ones that my wife had been shown during the initial consultation.

Lastly, there was a hum coming from one of the new speakers that shouldn't have been there.

My wife had to take the car back immediately for fixing the speaker, as this was simply unacceptable.

We felt initially a bit awkward about the different stereo that was installed, but we thought we'd give it a go. The first thing I'd noticed was that your staff had not seen fit to provide us with a user's manual for the new unit. How in the name of Frank does anyone expect to operate a car stereo with a CD player and USB port with no user's manual?

My wife returned to the shop and got one, but by this stage, I was far from happy with the unit provided.

The unit had several design and build flaws:

• Decals on buttons didn't line up
• The backlit display screen was too dim to read during the day if the sun was out; and
• Some buttons were lit so you could see what and where they were at night. Others weren't

On top of this, there was a fairly major problem that the stereo kept re-setting itself, and losing the memory of sound settings, radio station pre-sets etc.

Now if we'd got the stereo we initially requested, as discussed, this wouldn't be a problem. Instead, we had a very poorly designed and made unit that simply wasn't good enough.

We brought our car back to talk about getting the problem with the memory fixed and I mentioned to Gary about the problems we'd had to date. Gary assured us that we could book our car in to have the memory problem fixed. I asked about having the unit replaced with one we'd initally requested, and he told us that we'd have to buy a new unit at full price. He asked what was wrong with the unit that was installed, and when I told him about the build and design problems, he seemed very uninterested.

Shocked beyond belief, we walked out and swore never to return. We drove down the street to JB Hi-Fi and bought another unit (a Sony, this time) that did the job perfectly. In fact, they were able to install it on the spot.

My wife and I went off for a soothing cup of tea while the installation was being done. When we came back, the auto-electrician who was installing the new unit was not happy.

"Who did the wiring for this?" he asked.

We told him.

"I would sack my own son if he did a wiring job as crap as this."

Gary, this was absolutely the last straw. We should be pursuing you with a claim for the extra stereo we had to buy and the amount of time we've had to do without the car while you guys installed and fixed stuff.

You'd better pray that the immobiliser you guys installed was done properly, otherwise it'll be a visit to Consumer Affairs for you. Think yourself lucky that all we're telling our friends is to not use Gary's Car Radio in Heidelberg under any circumstances.

Not happy at all,

Dikkii.

Ms Dikkii has requested that I do not send this letter to Gary's Car radio. A pity, this.