Westkingsdown.....

I thought you could just take it anywhere ..its not exactly a complex job .

You'd be surprised how most garages can botch up the simplest of jobs.

In the case of this kind of job I've seen ripped CV boots where previously there weren't any and split balljoint boots, all from carelessness; maybe the workers were hungover. Of course, that potentially adds to significant parts spend to the list.

I'm happy to reel of my list of misfortune for simple jobs.

In one case, I had an unobtainable exhaust Y-Pipe damaged. I say unutainable as the car even now is rare (Mondeo V6 3.0) and Ford wanted £600 for a new one. Get a secondhand one I hear you say. ST220s which were 3.0s were more common but involve changing all of the manifolds which of course adds on time. Almost no 3.0 non STs were broken at the time or had their exhausts cut off for engine removal. All of this was down to the garage's laziness, which I'd end up sorting on the driveway . I only took it in to get the cat bashed out until a replacement turned up ; car had zero power with the shot cat. Nothing too hard at all.