Good morning all,

I am hoping that someone will be able to advise me on what to do please.

We have recently bought a 2002 Mercedes V Class Abiente. We are very pleased with the vehicle and it has an excellent spec with everything working, (well it did!)

My girlfriend decided she wanted to upgrade the headunit to an Alpine Bluetooth unit which she found on Halfords online. The headunit was £120 and fitting was £30. She booked the car in for 1.30pm on Tuesday and was told it was going to be a 30 minute job. She arrived on Tuesday and sure enough they precedes to fit the unit. After an hour and 45 minutes of some kid who had no idea what he was doing, (he asked his collegue 6 or 7 times to come and help as he'd 'tried evey coloured wire but it doesn't power on). my girlfriend was told it was done. However she decided to try the TV just to be on the safe side and it didn't work the kid had cut the power supplt to it. After another 30 minutes, it was working again.

By this time they had managed to severly scratch the dash board, and cause my girlfriend to miss a work meeting she had that afternoon.

After she paid for this awful service, she drove away and realised that the heater was blowing hot air non stop and that they had broken the air con and heater. She took it back and they said "it was like that beofre - must have been" my girlfriend didn't accept this and explained how it was all working perfectly until they touched it and was told that they 'can't do anything about it, need a diagnostics piece of equipment'. So at 6pm my girlfriend drove home (very warm) with a very damaged car after they had so called fitted the headunit. They did refund the fitting but didn't seem to think that they need do anything else.

After we kept calling them we arranged to take the car in yesterday as they had the right piece of equipment to tell them what was wrong. We arrived there at 10am and met the assistant manager, he told us to go for a coffee and an hour later he rang to say it was fixed. We went back and sure enough the aircon was cold again however the heater was blowing hot from some vents and cold from others. The manager then started to get pretty impatient telling me it was normal and I didn't know what I was talking about. When I told him that I wasn't satisfied he got very abrubt, saying fine I'll ring my guy at Merceds but this is standard.

I then then dared to ask what he intended to do about the fact my girlfriend had wasted her whole afternoon on Tuesday and that we were wasting our weekend yesterday. He told me that it wasn't true that my girlfriend had spent so long, and I told him exactly what time she arrived and the sequences of events. He then said well I've done all I can. He said mistakes happen and I need to accept that. He also tried to tell me that I was lucky they only charged £30 as it should have been £50 for this head unit because it has Bluetooth! I told him that their website clearly said £30 which he seemed to be unaware of and kept saying we should have been £50. I asked for his area managers details which her refused to give me. He eventually gave me Customer Services number and said, "take it up with them if you want"!

I am now left with a car which we spent a lot of money on 2 months ago which has a very badly scratched dash and a heater which is next to useless. I am also very concerned that what they have done isn't safe!

The assistant manager Mick was rude, ignorant and couldn't have been less helpful, I am very annoyed and want to escalate this. I am also concerned it is going to be very costly to get this sorted by a real professional. I have heard stories of Halfords emplying kids who don't know what thy are doing and more fool me for not going somewhere else!

What shall I do report them to trading standards?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Ollie