An Angus man has lost a £365 damages claim against a supermarket giant which denies damaging his vehicle in its car wash.
Morrisons has refused to stump up for a cracked rear spoiler despite admitting that Gary Cameron, from Arbroath, was told that repair costs would be met by the company.
Barman Gary (27) said he heard a ”loud bang” when putting his Renault Clio though the car wash at Morrisons in Arbroath in May. Since then he has fought a long-running battle to get his repair costs back.
A duty manager filled out an incident report after Gary found his rear spoiler was cracked on both sides after going through the wash.
”The manager said that paying for the repairs wouldn’t be a problem as they had paid for damage to wipers before,” Gary said. ”He said the only thing they don’t pay out on are aerials as there is a specific warning about going through the car wash with them.
”I’d been through the car wash countless times before with no problems but this time there was a loud bang and I saw there were massive cracks down both sides of the rear spoiler. It was just left hanging by a thread with just the seal keeping it on.”
Gary was advised to obtain an estimate, which came to £365, and send this with the incident report to the Morrisons head office.
In July he received a letter back, stating that while the company was ”concerned to learn of damage” it was not accepting responsibility as ”the car wash is used entirely at your own risk”.
Gary subsequently wrote to the company again and made several phonecalls, which he claims were not returned.
He then received another letter in August that stated the company had made ”further investigations” and there was no evidence of a fault with the car wash equipment.
”I had to meet the cost of the repair out of my own pocket,” Gary said. ”I’m very disappointed in how this has been handled with Morrisons.
”I did nothing wrong the car wash damaged my car, yet they have refused to accept responsibility despite saying they would meet the costs.”
A Morrisons spokesman said the damage had been an ”isolated incident”.
He added: ”It appears that Mr Cameron was incorrectly advised at the time that the cost of repair would definitely be met by Morrisons.
”The form he completed was for information purposes only and does not admit liability. After investigation, this was found to be an isolated incident at the car wash.
”There were also no other reports of faults or problems on that day and therefore his claim was turned down.”