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Mike the mobile mechanic

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Elham Rizi | 16:51 UK time, Tuesday, 3 May 2011

This week we're on the road investigating a mobile mechanic: Mike Dos Santos who calls himself 'Just Mechanic' to be precise. He operates in the North London area and his company and website should not be confused with any other company of a similar name. Mike Dos Santos' website says "he'll do the work, when you go to work" - well, that is the beauty of a mobile mechanic.

Mike Dos Santos

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However, we've been hearing from some former customers of Mike's who are less than happy with the service he provided. Colin Hawkes paid Mike to take his daughter's car away and replace the fuel pump, but when the car came back it arrived with two unpaid parking fines. Had the car actually been in a garage at all? Colin got a further surprise when he examined the work and found that all Mike had done was spray the pump with silver paint. He charged Colin's daughter £375.

Andrew McDonald had a similar experience. He paid Mike £340 to replace his clutch, but the very next day it failed again when the clutch pin gave way. This time Andrew got someone else to look at it. The new mechanic told Andrew that the clutch hadn't been changed at all.

And William Little paid Mike £400 for repairs to his campervan after it had failed its MOT. He took it back to the testing centre expecting it to pass with flying colours, so was very surprised when the tester told him it looked no different than before. He showed William that the exhaust pipe was hanging off and told him his mechanic hadn't even bothered to replace a lamp in the front light.

All three tried to complain... but got nowhere. So it's time for us to contact Mike.

We get ourselves a car, a lovely Renault Megane, and an owner, the equally lovely Harriet. We then call in the services of expert mechanic John Dabek to create simple faults for Mike to find - and fix. John rigs a clutch fault by simply pulling the clutch cable off its mounting. It would be an easy job to put right and would only take a couple of seconds. Our car already has a water leak that will need a bit of work, and John's thrown one last fault into the ring by replacing a perfectly good working coil pack with a faulty one, meaning our car is now also misfiring.

Harriet can't drive her car in that state so what does she do? She calls her local mobile mechanic of course. Michael Dos Santos.

Mike arrives at our house rigged with hidden cameras and Harriet explains the issues she's having. He quickly spots the water leak and tells us he thinks the seal has gone on our water pump. Then he works out why our car is misfiring and tells us we need a new coil pack... so far so good. But what will he make of our clutch problem? Mike tells us he thinks a release bearing has gone inside the clutch which would require the entire clutch to be replaced. A completely unnecessary job that is going to bring the total cost of our bill up to £400, which is a fair price - if all the jobs needed doing.

Harriet agrees to the quote, and Mike tows the car away. Being the curious type, we decide to follow him and discover that Mike's workshop is a bit out of the ordinary. In fact, it's not a workshop at all but a bit of woodland at the end of a track in a north London nature reserve.

We secretly film him carrying out the repair and John Dabek is on hand to view the footage. He spots straight away that the replacement coil Mike has sourced for our car has the wrong sort of connectors on it. Like a square peg in a round hole, it's not going to fit. He tries some spare leads and tries to start the car without any luck, so he reaches for his trusty black sticky tape to try and fix the problem. Unfortunately what Mike has forgotten is that the car is fitted with an immobiliser, and if you leave it for longer than a minute before the engine starts it won't start. It's a very common feature on certain makes of car, and we did tell Mike about it when he collected it, but he's forgotten this. Instead, he tries to improvise a solution. John Dabek can easily see Mike is trying to butcher the connectors to make them fit, but the car is still immobilised.

After 20 minutes, he still hasn't worked it out. So, he turns his attention to our clutch problem. Mike told us we needed a whole new clutch kit, when all we needed was a cable slipping back into place. John Dabek watches as he spots the cable and hooks it back into place.

Next he turns his attention to our leaking cooling system. He removes the pipe - so far so good. But then he looks quite unsure of what to do next. First he licks it. Then he clips it. Then he gives up on it and goes and gets another one. Then he sticks some stuff on the end of it and shoves it back in. Done, and what better way to celebrate than having another go at that coil. It still doesn't quite fit but by some modern miracle Mikes mangling, banging and bodging has got the car running on all cylinders. But for how long his repair will last is anyone's guess. And wouldn't it have been easier to just buy the right parts in the first place?

Anyhow, Mike just needs to top up the coolant, and he's home and dry but as soon as he starts to top it up John Dabek spots water pouring out under the car; the pipe he has just fixed is clearly leaking, so out it comes again. A little later Mike finally manages to seal it and the repair is complete. John's conclusion: "Well that should have been a very straightforward repair that. And he's made an absolute pig's ear of it."

And let's not forget, he said he was going to put a whole new clutch in which he didn't - so will he charge us for it?

Mike delivers the car back to Harriet and tells her that the original pipe was corroded so he replaced it with a second hand pipe from the scrapyard, and put a new seal on it. He also tells her that he put a second hand coil on and now everything is fine, but he hasn't mentioned the clutch yet. Harriet wants to make sure she's got what she paid for, so she asks Mike if it was the bearing in the clutch that was causing the clutch to fail. This is Mike's chance to own up but he tells us it was the release bearing and that he replaced the whole clutch with a brand new part.

Mike lied to us about the clutch. We know he repaired the car at a nature reserve but will he admit that? When Harriet questions him he tells us he repaired the car at a garage - another lie.

It's time we put our allegations to Mike so we call him out to another house, but this time we have a surprise waiting for him under the bonnet. We've replaced the engine with Dan, so when Mike pops the hood he'll get a little more than he bargained for. However, Mike doesn't show up and isn't answering his phone, but then our team spot him a couple of miles away and we pile into a car to try and track him down. In our haste we forget about poor Dan waiting under our rigged car bonnet.

Mike is still there as we arrive and Matt has some important questions to ask him. When we question him on the clutch he is adamant that he fitted the new part, despite Matt telling him we have evidence to state otherwise. In fact, Mike doesn't want to discuss our allegations at all, so he jumps in his car and makes a speedy getaway.

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