I used Alma for a long while. They seemed to be ok but you have to trust a garage to do what they say they are going to do. It's not like a builder where you can see what they've actually done. I started getting suspicious because things were going wrong that should have been fixed. I took the car in with an electrical fault. They supposedly changed the alternator and charged me for it. The car died again a couple of months later. The RAC guy who came out told me the alternator was faulty and that it was still the original alternator. They charged me to change the cambelt at the specified interval. A couple of thousand miles later the cambelt broke, writing off the top end of the engine. The chief cowboy there told me my camshaft had broken. On the balance of probability the most likely scenario was that they didn't change the cambelt at all. I've never heard of a camshaft breaking. They then took about 2 months to fix the car. Yes I know, I'm a glutton for punishment, but at the time I still trusted them. Another time I asked them to investigate a belt noise. When I went to collect the car I asked the minion that worked on it if it was fixed. He said yes, but as I drove the car away I could still hear the noise. This garage is the stereotypical cowboy outfit. Every negative cliché you've ever heard about back street garages could have come from here. read more

I'm afraid I was so disappointed with everything about this garage that I was compelled to put it in writing to warn anybody thinking of using them. It started when I called to book an oil and filter change on my Land Rover Freelander and the woman on the end of the phone (Jess?) was so rude that I should never have gone ahead, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and booked it in....they quoted £175 and told me they'd use fully synthetic oil and an original Land Rover filter. when I picked it up I asked to see the old filter (or the bin they'd thrown it in) and the type of oil they'd used...they couldn't show me either ...I refused to pay so they halved my bill. I went to another local mechanic who for £20 took the splashguard off from under the engine so he could look at the filter...not replaced at all! They not only charged me for work they hadn't done but if the oil filter failed there would be an enormous repair bill waiting for me because of their dishonesty. God knows what kind of cheap oil they put in so I had it drained and replaced with the correct grade. Never again will I use these people and I have informed trading standards and have been promised that they will 'look into it'. read more