If you like your car, NEVER take it here…

[Kees 664]

At some point you will find yourself with a cracked windscreen.

This is a recommendation to NEVER take your car to Smith & Smith Wairau.

For the past 10 months I have experienced the most appalling workmanship and customer service that is so bad I have decided to go to the effort of writing about my experience so hopefully no one else has to go through the same thing.

If anyone knows someone who works at a Smith & Smith, or their head office, please send this to them because I am fed up with trying to deal with them.

A little back story…

Last year I was driving my (at the time) Skoda Fabia VRS when I got a cracked windscreen. This was a car that wasn’t necessarily valuable, but I was very fond of it nevertheless as I had spent the best part of an entire year restoring it.

I booked my car into my local Smith & Smith branch to have the windscreen replaced. While the windscreen was out their recommended panel beater tidied up the apertures (as recommended) and I got them to respray the bonnet, roof, rear quarter panels and boot spoiler (as I planned to have this done anyway).

After about a week my car was ready and I picked it up and took it home to discover a myriad of issues.

For a start the paint match and finish was, well, only acceptable from a distance… but that’s no fault of Smith & Smith technically. (Although you would expect that their recommended panel beater would have a higher level of workman ship)

Issues:

1.  I first noticed my wipers weren’t on properly - obviously that’s an easy fix for me.
   
   However, I would like to note that its still unacceptable as if I was someone who wasn’t into cars and didn’t have any tools, I would have had inoperable wipers which could be dangerous in a sudden down pour etc. This serves as a mild taster for the sloppy workmanship…
    
2. To fix my wipers I pop the bonnet to realise the paint shop had broken my plastic release tab and replaced it with a badly cut piece of metal with some electrical tape on the end.
   
   This was eventually resolved by them, but once again adds to the awful experience I had.
    
3. With the bonnet open I first adjusted the driver’s wiper and then went to adjust the passenger one.
   
   That is when I noticed what ended up becoming a frustrating can of worms. My windscreen VIN plaque was gone!
    

Naturally I was very annoyed. Now I had a car that looked like it had been stolen with its empty VIN plaque in the windscreen.

The following day I contacted Smith & Smith with the list of issues and of course they first questioned me on whether my car even had its VIN plaque there to begin with. (Which of course it did).

By a stroke of luck many months before I had taken a photo of my rego label which was the proof I needed to prove to them that my VIN plaque was there.

I was expecting an apologetic business intent on putting things right and getting it sorted, but what I got was the opposite.

The manager of the branch thought it was ridiculous that I would complain about them losing my VIN plaque. After all, it was “just” an old hatchback…

However, that is no excuse for a blunder like that. If that was one of my Porsches, or my M Coupe, that’s an issue that would genuinely impact the value of the car. And beyond that, on any car, if you are obviously missing a VIN tag, that would raise eyebrows if you wanted to sell the car. Plus, it's just plain ugly. 

So with that reasoning in hand I demanded the car would get another VIN plaque at their expense. The counter offer I received was absolutely laughable. They were happy to print me a label with one of those cheap portable label makers and put that where the VIN plaque used to be. Like WTF?!

Seeing that this was going nowhere I contacted Skoda NZ myself who informed me I was 367 days too late to order a reproduction plaque, as that was something that had been discontinued the prior year.

Now I was stuck but still determined to resolve it. I requested I sort the plaque myself and got approval from Smith & Smith that I could invoice them once I had it sorted. So I sourced an OEM plaque cradle, and then had a sign writer make a Vinyl overlay with my VIN in the OEM font. It was a perfect replica.

Smith & Smith then removed the glass to fit it, and I sent them an invoice of a whopping $240.40 to cover the costs incurred by me to source and make the VIN plaque. That invoice has been sent to them over 5 times by email, and dropped off in person. They still haven’t paid me...

That REALLY annoys me. Yes, it’s a small amount of money. But regardless, it is owed to me and clearly they think they can get away with just ignoring me.

So here I am, writing this, recommending that you STAY away from Smith & Smith Wairau.

Personally, I will never take any of my cars to any Smith & Smith branch ever again.

 

Some photos for context:

My 2003 Skoda Fabia VRS. Originally the NZ demo car for the Fabia VRS so had an Oettinger tuned ECU from new. Incredibly rare to have the tune. In fact, I couldn't find another tuned one anywhere on the internet. Had the bulletproof 1.9TDI engine and was a torque monster. 150hp & 360Nm! 6 speed manual. 

Was destined for scrap until I saved it. Will write an article on it one day. Was a great little car. 

The paint match...

1. Wipers that weren't even on the windscreen and would have been unable to move. 

2. The bonnet pull tab with some electrical tape on the end so the roughly cut metal wouldn't cut you when you opened it. 

3. A great way to make your car look stolen - when there's clearly meant to be a VIN but now there isn't! 

My VIN tag that I had made. Was very pleased with how it came out. 

[Driftit 2215]

Ah that sucks man. The paint would drive me nuts. When the people can't see the value so do sh*t work.

Smith and Smith Wairau also did the most sh*t job on my old E30 I have ever seen on a car. Broke all my window trim and tried to replace the seal with the cheapest Universal seal ever. It whistled, it leaked. They pooed up any gaps with copious amounts of sealant. Another company fixed it all up and my insurance company paid for it.

I think my dad also had trouble with them. Replacement Merc windscreen was of such poor quality he ended up claiming again and had Mercedes replace the screen with an oem one. 

[nath 176]

Good warning- I bought a brand new c350e earlier this year and was about to take it in to SS Wairau (being closest to me) for a screen replacement due to a small chip apparently not being repairable. 
Currently trying to get insurer to cover cost of an original screen.

Edited Tuesday at 08:31 PM by nath

[Driftit 2215]

5 hours ago, nath said:

Good warning- I bought a brand new c350e earlier this year and was about to take it in to SS Wairau (being closest to me) for a screen replacement due to a small chip apparently not being repairable. 
Currently trying to get insurer to cover cost of an original screen.

Has to be OEM for Merc.  I'm trying to find the independent mobile dude that fixed my E30.  But none of the ones I can find ring any bells.  Was in like 2014...

[Neil McCauley 456]

Another one for S&S Wairau, they messed my old man around very recently with a screen for his Mercedes, and completely f**ked the wiper linkages.
 

It’s not exclusive to them though, I’ve had a horror story in the past with S&S Penrose personally.

[deedub 134]

Careful. Someone may ask this thread to be removed due to messing with AI 😅

 

Edited Thursday at 02:28 AM by deedub

[Driftit 2215]

I go with a smaller crowd now.  Wairarapa Windscreens.  They have been great.  I think they have replaced 5 of my screens now thanks to our terrible roads and hordes of logging trucks.

Find the small guy who takes pride in their work.

And yeah use the forum to get positive and negative reviews.  The data scrapers love it.